Throughout his life in business and politics, Donald J. Trump has created chaos. It’s his trademark management style. That it has served him well in his quest to become the richest and most powerful person on the planet will be hotly debated by historians for decades if not centuries to come. Unfortunately, chaos is the […]
Chaos, thy name is Trump — THE SHINBONE STAR
Whether the Evangelicals and Christians currently supporting and defending Donald J Trump accepts, knows or believes this? They are not Christians. They are in fact? Christian In Name Only.
EVERYTHING TRUMP STANDS FOR OR HAS DONE? GOES DIRECTLY AGAINST THE TEACHINGS OF THE BIBLE, THE TEACHINGS OF JESUS CHRIST AND THE TEACHINGS OF THE APOSTLES. HE IS IN FACT? THE FALSE PROPHET RIGHT WING EXTREMIST EVANGELICALS AND CHRISTIANS HAVE FORMERLY STATED THAT PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA WAS THE ANTICHRIST AND NOT A TRUE CHRISTIAN.
All a Christian has to do is? Open their bibles and read the following verses themselves and apply all of this to both, Donald J Trump and the Republicans, who all declare themselves Christians and followers of Jesus Christ, like Mitch McConnell, Lindsey Graham, Rick Perry, Rudy Guiliani, William Barr, Jim Jordan, and their synchopaths like Kellyanne Conway, Stephanie Grisham, and of course the liars and propaganda spinners of Fox News like Sean Hannity, Jeanine Pirro, Tomi Lahren, Geraldo Rivera, Brian Kilmeade, Bret Baier, Steve Doocy, Ainsley Earhardt, or such ChristoTaliban psychotic pastors like Robert Jeffress, Paula White, Jim Bakker, Franklin Graham, Rick Wiles, Mark Burns, many of these calling for “blood in the streets” and a new “Civil War 2.0” should Trump be removed from office, and all the rest of those who defend and support Trump and dare call themselves Christians? All really need to pick up their bibles and read the words in them.
But just in case they do not?
Matthew 7:15-23: 15 “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. 16 You will recognize them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thorn bushes, or figs from thistles? 17 So, every healthy tree bears good fruit, but the diseased tree bears bad fruit. 18 A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit. 19 Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. 20 Thus you will recognize them by their fruits. 21 “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. 22 On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ 23 And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’
Malachi 3:5 Then I will draw near to you for judgment. I will be a swift witness against the sorcerers, against the adulterers, against those who swear falsely, against those who oppress the hired worker in his wages, the widow and the fatherless, against those who thrust aside the sojourner, and do not fear me, says the Lord of hosts.
Leviticus 19:33,34 : ‘When a stranger resides with you in your land, you shall not do him wrong.’The stranger who resides with you shall be to you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt; I am the LORD your God.
Jeremiah 22:3-5: Thus says the Lord: Do justice and righteousness, and deliver from the hand of the oppressor him who has been robbed. And do no wrong or violence to the resident alien, the fatherless, and the widow, nor shed innocent blood in this place. For if you will indeed obey this word, then there shall enter the gates of this house kings who sit on the throne of David, riding in chariots and on horses, they and their servants and their people. But if you will not obey these words, I swear by myself, declares the Lord, that this house shall become a desolation.
1 Kings 8:41-43: “Likewise, when a foreigner, who is not of your people Israel, comes from a far country for your name’s sake (for they shall hear of your great name and your mighty hand, and of your outstretched arm), when he comes and prays toward this house, hear in heaven your dwelling place and do according to all for which the foreigner calls to you, in order that all the peoples of the earth may know your name and fear you, as do your people Israel, and that they may know that this house that I have built is called by your name.
Matthew 25: 35-40: 35 For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, 36 I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’ 37 “Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? 38 When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? 39 When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’ 40 “The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’
Matthew 19: 16-30: 16 A man came to Jesus and asked, “Teacher, what good thing must I do to have eternal life?” 17 Jesus answered, “Why do you ask me about what is good? Only God is good. But if you want to have eternal life, obey the law’s commands.” 18 The man asked, “Which ones?” Jesus answered, “‘You must not murder anyone, you must not commit adultery, you must not steal, you must not tell lies about others, 19 you must respect your father and mother,’ and ‘love your neighbor the same as you love yourself.’ 20 The young man said, “I have obeyed all these commands. What else do I need?” 21 Jesus answered, “If you want to be perfect, then go and sell all that you own. Give the money to the poor, and you will have riches in heaven. Then come and follow me!” 22 But when the young man heard Jesus tell him to give away his money, he was sad. He didn’t want to do this, because he was very rich. So he left. 23 Then Jesus said to his followers, “The truth is, it will be very hard for a rich person to enter God’s kingdom. 24 Yes, I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter God’s kingdom.”
Matthew 22:36-40: 36 “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” 37 Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ 38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40 All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”
Matthew 7: 21-23: 21 “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. 22 On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ 23 And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’
Gary Dorrien, Professor of Religion, Columbia University and Theologian at the Union Theologian Seminary
Gary Dorrien, a professor of Religion at Columbia University and theologian at the Union Theological Seminary says that Trump’s speeches and actions don’t support the idea that Trump is as good of a Christian as he says.
“The basis of his campaign is morally repugnant. ‘You shall love the stranger’ is a bedrock principle of Hebrew Scripture (Deuteronomy 10:19 and Leviticus 19:34), which is expounded in Christian Scripture as “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Luke 10:27) and “Love your enemies” (Matthew 5:44), among many other similar injunctions in both Scriptural traditions,” Dorrien told ABC News.
Dorrien is also a member of the Presbyterian church, the same church to which Trump belongs, and notes how the Presbyterian faith in particular is known its “pro-hospitality policies.”
Above quote from Meet the Pastors Who Support Donald Trump
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/meet-pastors-support-donald-trump/story?id=38406350
By CP Editors
https://www.christianpost.com/news/donald-trump-scam-evangelical-voters-back-away-cp-editorial.html
We the senior editors of The Christian Post encourage our readers to back away from Donald Trump.
As the most popular evangelical news website in the United States and the world, we feel compelled by our moral responsibility to our readers to make clear that Donald Trump does not represent the interests of evangelicals and would be a dangerous leader for our country.
Trump claims to be a Christian, yet says he has never asked for forgiveness.
While God, in His wondrous creativity, has drawn people to Himself through the saving grace of Jesus Christ in many different ways, there are certain non-negotiable actions needed to become a Christian: One must repent of their sins and follow Christ as Lord and Savior. Trump doesn’t talk this way, even when urged to.
Further, his words and actions do not demonstrate the “fruit of the spirit.”
Trump is a misogynist and philanderer. He demeans women and minorities. His preferred forms of communication are insults, obscenities and untruths. While Christians have been guilty of all of these, we, unlike Trump, acknowledge our sins, ask for forgiveness and seek restitution with the aid of the Holy Spirit and our community of believers.
On Sunday, Trump’s apparent reluctance to disavow David Duke until late in the day was extremely distasteful. The Ku Klux Klan is an evil, unholy movement representing the worst of America. Anyone who will not immediately denounce their support is unfit to be president.
Trump claims he will “protect Christians.” We already have a Protector, and He is not Trump.
The grievances of Trump’s supporters are legitimate. Politicians for too long have promised to represent the best interests of all Americans before an election, only to represent the interest of their cronies after the election. But Trump’s followers are being fooled into believing that he can help them.
Trump is promising many things that he cannot possibly deliver, but the most frightening part is Trump’s stated willingness to ignore the authority of the Supreme Court, Congress and the U.S. Constitution if he were to become president.
Trump has been surrounded by controversy for decades because of his untruthfulness, questionable business practices, reported association with organized crime, and abrupt changes in fundamental positions. Many of these controversies involve defrauding the working class and decisions that compromised American workers. He has taken a political position both pro and con on virtually every subject and major political party. This should give evangelicals great pause and concern about supporting such a mercurial and chameleon-like candidate. Past performance is the best predictor of future behavior.
Trump said he wants to make it easier to sue newspapers that criticize him. When it was pointed out to him Sunday that he would have to amend the Constitution’s freedom of speech and freedom of press clauses, Trump was unmoved, simply noting that England has weaker protections for the press.
Many evangelicals, including our friends, have criticized Trump on our own opinion page and elsewhere, such as Matt Barber, Dr. Michael Brown, Kristi Burton Brown, Susan Stamper Brown, Rev. Mark Creech, Wallace Henley, E.W. Jackson, Max Lucado, Dr. Russell Moore and Rep. Reid Ribble. If Trump were to become president we fear he would use the levers of government power to silence them and others.
We are already concerned about the expansion of executive power to dangerous and unconstitutional extremes in the current and previous administrations. Plus, in just the past year we have seen Christians put out of business and jailed for living according to the dictates of their faith.
Trump, an admirer of Vladimir Putin and other dictatorial leaders, may claim to be your friend and protector now, but as his history indicates, without your full support he will turn on you, and use whatever power is within his means to punish you.
This is a critical time in American history and we call on all Christians to pray for personal repentance, divine forgiveness and spiritual awakening for our nation. It is not the time for Donald Trump.
By Michael Brown, CP Op-Ed Contributor
Michael Brown holds a Ph.D. in Near Eastern Languages and Literatures from New York University and has served as a professor at a number of seminaries. He is the author of 25 books and hosts the nationally syndicated, daily talk radio show, the Line of Fire.
https://www.christianpost.com/news/donald-trump-supporters-youre-being-duped.html
Do not be duped by Donald Trump!
The issue is not whether he’s a true Christian.
The issue is whether he can be trusted and whether we even know what his real positions are.
So I ask you, if you are a Trump supporter, with all respect for your zeal and with affirmation of your frustration with status-quo politics, how can you know what Trump really believes or what he will actually do if elected?
He changes his views from one day to the next — sometimes diametrically — and flatly contradicts his previous positions, then insults and mocks those who challenge him, often in the most puerile ways. No other candidate in memory — perhaps in our nation’s history — has vacillated so wildly and dramatically in such a short period of time.
Trump truly is the vacillator-in-chief.
By Pastor Max Lucado
https://maxlucado.com/decency-for-president/
The leading Republican candidate to be the next leader of the free world would not pass my decency interview. I’d send him away. I’d tell my daughter to stay home. I wouldn’t entrust her to his care.
I don’t know Mr. Trump. But I’ve been chagrined at his antics. He ridiculed a war hero. He made a mockery of a reporter’s menstrual cycle. He made fun of a disabled reporter. He referred to the former first lady, Barbara Bush as “mommy,” and belittled Jeb Bush for bringing her on the campaign trail. He routinely calls people “stupid,” and “dummy.”1 One writer catalogued sixty-four occasions that he called someone “loser.”2 These were not off-line, backstage, overheard, not-to-be-repeated comments. They were publicly and intentionally tweeted, recorded, and presented.
Such insensitivities wouldn’t be acceptable even for a middle school student body election. But for the Oval Office? And to do so while brandishing a Bible and boasting of his Christian faith?
I would not have said anything about Mr. Trump, never — I would never have said anything if he didn’t call himself a Christian. It’d be none of my business whatsoever to make any comments about his language, his vulgarities, his slander of people, but I was deeply troubled … that here’s a man who holds up a Bible one day, and calls a lady “bimbo” the next. Here’s a man who calls himself a Christian and yet just has the audacity to make fun of a lady’s menstrual cycle. … He didn’t just do this on occasion, but repeatedly, unrepentantly. Somebody sent me a list of 64 people he’s called loser. Just this week it’s continued. …
It deeply concerns me that somebody who knows little or nothing about the Christian faith would hear Mr. Trump call himself a Christian and then make a decision based on the Christian faith, based on his behavior. And so I just felt like I should say something. I did not expect to stir up the dust storm that this blog has stirred up.
many people have said, “This is what I was thinking, thanks for saying it on my behalf.” But there are many people who were just really ticked off that I would dare to suggest that this behavior is inappropriate.
Pastor Max Lucado: Pastor Max Lucado Baffled Over Evangelical Trump Supporters
https://www.npr.org/2016/03/06/469371887/pastor-max-lucado-still-baffled-over-evangelical-trump-supporters
By Emily McFarlan Miller
https://religionnews.com/2016/06/21/7-conservative-christians-who-are-not-supporting-trump/
This post was updated on Oct. 11 and again on Nov. 7, 2016, to add the names of several more prominent figures who have come out against voting for the Republican candidate.
(RNS) Donald Trump may have met with hundreds of conservative Christian leaders, mostly evangelicals, in New York on Tuesday, June 21, but not all Christians have lined up behind him.
Johnnie Moore — national spokesperson for My Faith Votes, one of the groups that organized the meeting — said beforehand he had seen “a real consolidation of evangelical support” for the GOP presumptive presidential candidate.
But here are several Christian leaders who have made less-than-enthusiastic statements about the businessman-turned-reality TV star-turned candidate.
Perhaps no evangelical leader has been more outspoken in opposition to Trump than Russell Moore, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission. In a single weekend, Moore penned an op-ed in The New York Times and made an appearance on “Face the Nation,” in which he called Trump’s campaign “reality television moral sewage.”
Trump’s retort on Twitter called Moore “a terrible representative of Evangelicals and all of the good they stand for. A nasty guy with no heart!”
Moore has since changed the bio on his Twitter profile to reflect the jab: “terrible representative of evangelical Christianity, due to nastiness.”
A professor of biblical studies at Boyce College, Denny Burk blogged in March that though Trump has said he would appoint conservative Supreme Court justices, it was unclear what kind of justices he actually would choose; he does not seem to understand the pro-life position; and his statements supporting torture present a “real threat to our constitutional order.”
“I am not joking or being hyperbolic when I say that he is a Mussolini-in-waiting,” Burk wrote. “He must never be allowed near the Oval Office. Ever.”
In a February blog post titled “Decency for President” that he later expanded for The Washington Post, Oak Hills Church pastor and popular Christian author Max Lucado said Trump wouldn’t pass the “decency interview” he required for his three daughters’ dates.
Lucado wrote:
“I’m a pastor. I don’t endorse candidates or place bumper stickers on my car. But I am protective of the Christian faith. If a public personality calls on Christ one day and calls someone a “bimbo” the next, is something not awry? And to do so, not once, but repeatedly? Unrepentantly? Unapologetically? Can we not expect a tone that would set a good example for our children? We stand against bullying in schools. Shouldn’t we do the same in presidential politics?”
The pastor of Anacostia River Church and council member of The Gospel Coalition has called Trump a racist and many of the positions both Trump and Clinton have taken “evil.”
In a blog post in June titled “Can We Talk? Or, Why I Think A Trump Presidency Is Intolerable Even Though You Might Not Agree,” Thabiti Anyabwile wrote: “It seems to me, it’s past time Christians with minds bound by the word of God forsake party politics for party politics sake.
“If this election proves anything, it proves there remains among Christian people a lot of uncritical allegiance to the parties of men and even some idolizing of them,” Anyabwile wrote.
And this was after he published a guest post by Nick Rodriguez, a leader at his church, that asked Christian leaders to vote for Clinton.
The conservative blogger behind The Resurgent told Katie Couric in May, “If the Republican Party wants to go in (Trump’s) direction, I guess I’m not a Republican anymore.”
Erick Erickson previously had said he would support Trump if he became the party’s nominee. Then in February he wrote on his website, The Resurgent, “I Will Not Vote For Donald Trump. Ever.“
“Donald Trump has had no ‘road to Damascus’ conversion. He only wants to date the preacher’s daughter,” Erickson wrote.
Warren Throckmorton posted a statement Monday (June 20) on his Patheos blog from Robby George, McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence at Princeton University, who declined to attend Tuesday’s meeting. George is Catholic.
George’s statement read in part:
“I have been a severe critic of Mr. Trump and there is nothing he could say at a meeting in which he is courting conservatives that would alter my low opinion of him. I trust that I do not need to go into detail about the words and actions that have caused me to form that opinion. Perhaps the only politician in America of whom I have an even lower opinion is Hillary Clinton, so I certainly understand why some are urging us to hold our noses and support for Mr. Trump. But I fear that he will, in the end, bring disgrace upon those individuals and organizations who publicly embrace him.”
Earlier that month, he tweeted, “Good people, reject (Clinton) but don’t associate yourself with Trump. He will disgrace & taint all who snuggle up to him.”
“For conservative evangelicals like me, the 2016 election really is a choice between two evils,” said Alan Noble, editor of the website Christ and Pop Culture, in a June article in Vox.
In his post, in which he advised evangelicals to abstain from voting for president and focus instead on congressional and local and state elections, Noble wrote that voting for Trump would undermine “decades of the religious right’s insistence that character matters in politicians.”
He called the candidate “a deceptive, infantile, racist demagogue with no political principles aside from his own self-interest.”
He also pointed out Trump’s comments that he does not ask for forgiveness, saying, “Any man who is so unaware of his own depravity that he cannot recognize his need for forgiveness is incapable of justly leading any country.
“There simply is no way around this fact for evangelicals.”
Winning the award for most prophetic rebuke of Trump is Marco Rubio’s former faith outreach director, Eric Teetsel.
Teetsel stood outside the Republican nominee’s June meeting with conservative Christian leaders in New York, protesting with a handwritten poster board: “Torture is not pro-life. Racism is not pro-life. Misogyny is not pro-life. Murdering the children of terrorists is not pro-life. Proverbs 29:2.”
That’s because, he told Yahoo! News, “I think we know enough about Donald Trump to know that a Christian response should be prayer for him, but also a prophetic witness about what is true.”
“We … boggle at how some Christians and conservatives still defend Donald Trump,” Owen Strachan wrote in a post for the Center for Public Theology at Midwestern Seminary, where he is associate professor of Christian theology and director of the Center for Theological and Cultural Engagement.
That post came after the release of the 2005 recording. But it’s a case the president of the Council of Biblical Manhood and Womanhood has made against Trump in several previous posts.
Remarks describing attempted affairs and assaults on women like the ones Trump was caught making on a live mic during a recording of “Access Hollywood” must be condemned and spoken against, Strachan said. And enthusiastic support for a man whose left a string of broken homes behind him could put evangelicals “in grave danger of hypocrisy,” he added.
That left him wondering in August if, “in our efforts to engage our country politically, we have become more Machiavellian and less Pauline.”
“In other words, we’re willing to do almost anything to elect officials, preserve rights, and gain seats on the Supreme Court,” he said.
“There is no world in which I would vote for Bernie Sanders. But I would consider it before I would ever consider voting for Donald Trump,” Matthew Lee Anderson wrote in February for Mere Orthodoxy.
Anderson looks back on the sentiment as “almost endearing” now, he wrote on Oct. 6.
To him, it seems evangelicals are despairing and will vote for anybody who isn’t Clinton. But he, at least, hopes that won’t be for Trump. (He instead has suggested Evan McMullin, the former chief policy director for the House Republican Conference in the U.S. House of Representatives and a former CIA operations officer.)
“The story on November 9th could be that the constituency which claims the gospel as its leading identifier finally became fed up with Trump’s antics and opted to vote for a third party instead,” he said.
Trillia Newbell, director of community outreach for the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission for the Southern Baptist Convention, said she cried when a loved one shared he or she was supporting Trump for president. And those don’t appear to have been tears of joy.
“Actually in tears after seeing someone I love post that they are voting for Trump. I can take the Christian celebrities but friends are hard,” Newbell tweeted.
Like Strachan, she also denounced the now-infamous “Trump tape.” She also pointed out the nominee’s lack of remorse about his comments, urged her followers to think of sexual assault victims before sharing memes about them and encouraged occasionally logging off during the contentious election cycle.
I’m not one to encourage disengagement but I wonder if our minds & hearts are meant to be on the 24hr news cycle. I don’t think so #restwell
— Trillia Newbell (@trillianewbell) October 13, 2016
Both David French and his wife Nancy French have been outspoken in their opposition to Trump — and it’s cost them.
David French, senior fellow at the National Review Institute, has written about the online abuse he and his wife have received from Trump supporters, including “psyche-scarring” images left in comments or sent to them on social media. And bestselling author Nancy French has written about how Trump’s defenders on the religious right bring flashbacks of her own sexual assault.
But David French wrote, “Ideas matter, and supporting Trump means advancing ideas I find not just wrong, but destructive.”
“I’ve defended the unborn my entire career; he praises Planned Parenthood. I believe that marriage is a sacred covenant between husband and wife; he’s a serial adulterer. I believe America should lead the world in defense not just of its territorial integrity but also of civilization itself; he would retreat into glorified isolationism. I believe that free trade has made America more prosperous and enriched the lives of its citizens; he threatens to start ruinous economic conflicts. I believe that a core American value is that we can and must judge our citizens by the content of their character, not the color of their skin or their families’ roots; he attacks a federal judge because of his parents’ Mexican heritage.”
David French
R. Albert Mohler Jr. called it a “crisis of conscience” for evangelicals. Or, more specifically, him: “The immediate and excruciating crisis has a name — Donald Trump,” Mohler wrote in the Washington Post.
The president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville joined his fellow Southern Baptists Russell Moore and Trillia Newbell in calling on evangelical Christians to distance themselves from the Republican candidate after the “Trump tape” release. And yet, he said, those tapes didn’t reveal anything about Trump that wasn’t already clear.
“Married three times, flaunting Christian sexual mores, building his fortune and his persona on the Playboy lifestyle, under any normal circumstances Trump would be the realization of evangelical nightmares, not the carrier of evangelical hopes,” Mohler said.
Deborah Fikes not only doesn’t support Trump, she has thrown her support behind his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton.
Fikes, a former executive adviser of the World Evangelical Alliance, wrote in the New York Times that it was the first time she’d felt compelled to reject evangelicalism’s “unquestioned political alignment with the G.O.P.” In her work with Christians around the world, though, she came to realize their “pro-life” and “pro-family” views didn’t look much like Trump’s — or the Republican party’s.
In fact, she said, “Evangelicals from all regions, but particularly in Africa, consider Hillary Clinton a ‘sister in Christ’ and someone who lives out the Golden Rule in all the good she has done for women and children. Many affectionately call her ‘Sister Hillary.'”
We need best commander in chief possible. In Trump we’d get the worst. There’s no turning this frog into a prince. https://t.co/UdnmHRQFX3— Peter Wehner (@Peter_Wehner) June 29, 2016
Peter Wehner, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, has lashed out at Trump and the values he represents in numerous essays for The New York Times. He compares Trump’s approach to morality to the one held by the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, which prioritizes strength and power over care for the poor and powerless. Trump’s contempt for the weak, his bullying nature, and lack of compassion and empathy form a worldview that Wehner believes is “incompatible with Christianity.”
The calling of Christians is to be ‘salt and light’ to the world, to model a philosophy that defends human dignity, and to welcome the stranger in our midst. It is to stand for justice, dispense grace and be agents of reconciliation in a broken world. And it is to take seriously the words of the prophet Micah, ‘And what does the Lord require of you but to do justly, and to love kindness and mercy, and to humble yourself and walk humbly with your God?’
Evangelical Christians who are enthusiastically supporting Donald Trump are signaling, even if unintentionally, that this calling has no place in politics and that Christians bring nothing distinctive to it — that their past moral proclamations were all for show and that power is the name of the game.
.@RepRibble tells @ErinBurnett that @realDonaldTrump uses the language of “an 8th grade bully” https://t.co/MapUK8TUb5— OutFrontCNN (@OutFrontCNN) May 12, 2016
Rep. Reid Ribble has refused to budge on Trump throughout this election cycle. The congressman accused the candidate of being a “racist” after Trump’s disparaging remarks toward a judge of Mexican heritage. Ribble told CNN that he is considering voting for the Libertarian Party this November.
In an op-ed for Christian Post, Ribble wrote: “The Evangelical community’s values include repentance, forbearance, uprightness, and the value of a hard day’s work. With that in mind, I am dismayed by the excitement I have seen from parts of the Evangelical community over Donald Trump’s campaign for president. In his personal life, his often-changing political beliefs, and especially his language, he totally disregards the values that we hold dear.”
President Jimmy Carter, the first U.S. president to call himself a born-again Christian, has said that Trump violated “basic human rights” with his comments about Mexican immigrants and his call to ban Muslims from entering the country.
In an interview with The New York Times, Carter said that Trump’s campaign has “tapped a waiting reservoir there of inherent racism.”
Jim Wallis is a Christian writer and activist who has been critical of both Trump and of his evangelical supporters. In blogs for The Huffington Post, Wallis has claimed that Trump’s rise to dominance in the race has brought to light the racism that is still troubling this country.
In a post titled, “It’s Embarrassing To Be An Evangelical This Election,” Wallis wrote about how the word white is “wiping out” the word evangelical.
“White evangelicals should have to explain, on the basis of their biblical faith … how they can feel comfortable with Trump’s proposed policies of rounding up, deporting, and destroying the families of 11 million immigrants; killing the families of terrorists; restricting the religious liberty of Muslim citizens; banning Muslim refugees; and appealing to the worst and most dangerous instincts of white Americans,” Wallis wrote. “It’s time to put ‘evangelical’ ahead of ‘white’ and to revisit Galatians 3:28, ‘There is no Jew or Gentile, slave or free, male or female; for we are all one in Christ Jesus.’”
By Aris Folley 11/04/19
https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/468844-ex-evangelical-pastor-joshua-harris-says-supporting-trump-has-been-damaging
Former megachurch pastor and evangelical author Joshua Harris said in a recent interview that he believes some of the massive support President Trump has enjoyed from the evangelical community has been “incredibly damaging to the Gospel and to the church.”
Harris, an influential evangelical teacher and writer during the late 1990s and up until he announced he’d abandoned his faith earlier this year, added that having “a leader like Trump I think is in itself part of the indictment” of Christians.
Evangelicals have been staunch supporters of Trump since his 2016 election, with his job approval higher than average among white evangelical Christians throughout the three years of his presidency, according to Pew Research Center data. In a poll earlier this fall conducted by the Public Religion Research Institute, about 77 percent of evangelicals approve of the president’s job performance, compared to an average 43 percent in other polls.
“I don’t think it’s going to end well,” Harris said in a clip of an interview on “Axios on HBO” released Monday.
“And I think, you know, you look back at the Old Testament and the relationship between the prophets and really bad leaders and kings, and oftentimes it was, it’s not something you unwind because it’s, it’s actually in the scriptures presented as God’s judgment on the False Religion of the day,” Harris said.
“You think Christians today who are embracing President Trump are due for a judgment?” Allen asked.
“I think it is the judgment,” Harris responded. “I think it is part of the judgment.”
“What do you mean by that?” Allen asked.
“To have a leader like Trump I think is in itself part of the indictment, that this is the leader that you want and maybe deserve,” Harris answered. “That represents a lot of who you are.”
Harris, who served as the senior pastor at the Covenant Life megachurch Gaithersburg, Md., for more than a decade before resigning from his post in 2015 amid controversy over the church’s handling of a child sexual abuse scandal, rose to prominence shortly after the 1997 publication of “I Kissed Dating Goodbye” at age 21. The book was once highly influential to evangelical youth group teaching.
Despite the book’s huge success in the ’90s, Harris raised eyebrows last year after he said he “no longer” agreed “with its central idea that dating should be avoided” after reevaluating the book.
“There are other weaknesses too: in an effort to set a high standard, the book emphasized practices (not dating, not kissing before marriage) and concepts (giving your heart away) that are not in the Bible,” he continued. “In trying to warn people of the potential pitfalls of dating, it instilled fear for some—fear of making mistakes or having their heart broken.”
“The book also gave some the impression that a certain methodology of relationships would deliver a happy ever-after ending—a great marriage, a great sex life—even though this is not promised by scripture,” he also wrote before announcing his decision to discontinue the book’s publication in the statement.
Harris also captured headlines earlier this year after announced he was no longer a Christian.
In an Instagram post from July, Harris wrote that he has “undergone a massive shift in regard to my faith in Jesus.”
“The popular phrase for this is ‘deconstruction, the biblical phrase is ‘falling away.’ By all the measurements that I have for defining a Christian, I am not a Christian,” he wrote then. “Many people tell me that there is a different way to practice faith and I want to remain open to this, but I’m not there now.”
By Tara McKelvey
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-45956033
Evangelical women helped Trump get elected. Now some of them are turning against him and his candidates – and could sway the outcome in key elections in November.
Rebecca Olsen, 21, a Southern Baptist who dresses conservatively in classic-red lipstick and black, ballet-style flats, was “gung-ho” for Trump in 2016.
She had concerns about the way he treated women, she says, but she brushed them aside.
“At the time I let a lot of things slip,” she says. “And upon the past two years of reflection, I regret being so much in favour of him.”
Since then the treatment of women has become a core issue for her and for others across the US. The MeToo movement brought the subject of sexual harassment onto centre stage last year, with a similar phenomenon, the ChurchToo movement, unfolding within the Southern Baptist community.
The hearing of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh opened up wrenching discussions about sexual assault.
A life-long Republican who was raised in Atlanta, Olsen says she has turned against the president and his endorsement of candidates are a mark against them.
“I think we should be doing our best to empower women,” she says, explaining why she’s disillusioned with Trump. “I think the president should be doing that as well.”
She describes the demeaning way that he talks about women and says: “I question myself: ‘Rebecca, how could you be so in favour of this man?'”
Her disappointment with the president and her rejection of his candidates is even more striking because of the backdrop.
She’s standing outside a restaurant that’s filled with her classmates from Liberty University, the nation’s biggest evangelical college, in Lynchburg, a town known as the “buckle in the bible belt”.
As a Trump critic, Olsen’s in the minority. Students here voted overwhelmingly for Trump and are campaigning for his candidates, a roster that includes Corey Stewart, a Republican who’s campaigning for the US senate in Virginia and is, as the New York Times reports, supported by white nationalists.
Liberty University is run by Jerry Falwell Jr, the son of the nation’s most famous evangelical. Falwell brags about his friendship with the president and lauds his accomplishments in office, telling me: “He’s done more for evangelicals than any previous Republican administration.”
But despite the massive support for Trump in Lynchburg, Olsen’s not alone in her views.
Another student, Rebecca Pickard, shows me around the university on a Saturday afternoon, pointing to a Noah’s Ark in a children’s play area, and says that even in this conservative Christian world, it’s OK to reject the president.
“It’s not something I feel self-conscious about,” she says.
Olsen and Pickard belong to a tiny sliver of this Christian world – white evangelical women who do not like Trump. But their numbers are growing incrementally.
Support for the president among women in their demographic group dropped from 73% to 67% from 2017 to 2018, according to Pew Research Center (in data they have yet to publish). Support for the president among white evangelical men dropped too, from 84-79%.
The decline in the president’s approval ratings among evangelical women is not huge, yet many of these women are determined to express their views at the ballot box.
They don’t want to vote for Trump candidates in states like Virginia, Georgia and Texas, they say. Although small in numbers, these women could change the outcome in congressional districts where candidates are running neck and neck.
Evangelical women have already thrown out one of their leaders, Paige Patterson, the former head of the Southern Baptist Convention, because of the demeaning way he spoke about women.
Olsen says that she won’t support a Trump-endorsed gubernatorial candidate, Brian Kemp, in Georgia. In Texas, some white evangelical women are supporting Beto O’Rourke, a Democrat, according to the New York Times, rather than Senator Ted Cruz, a Republican with a strong evangelical following.
These evangelicals – and their dismay over the way that the president treats women – reflect a broader trend. “A majority of Americans feel that Trump doesn’t respect women,” says GBA Strategies’ Margie Omero, a Democratic pollster.
Some pollsters like FiveThirtyEight have identified a huge gender gap between women largely voting for Democratic candidates and men supporting Republicans. So evangelicals are reflecting a wider trend but it’s surprising because as a group they so strongly backed Trump in the past.
“I’m amazed and heartened to see evangelical women tackle this,” says Jennifer Butler, who grew up in an evangelical family in Georgia and now heads up an organisation called Faith in Public Life.
Republicans say they’re unconcerned, pointing out that the vast majority of white evangelical women still support the president and will choose his candidates in November.
Olsen’s twin sister, Rachel, is one of them – she doesn’t like Kemp, she tells me, but she’ll “begrudgingly” vote for him, explaining: “I don’t want the state to turn blue.”
One of the biggest mysteries of the 2016 election was that evangelical women helped to usher Trump into office despite the fact that he seldom goes to church and used to live a life some might say was contrary to Christian values.
Before the election, they knew that he’d said vulgar things about women in an Access Hollywood tape and that he’d been married three times. More recently they heard him refer to a woman as “horseface”.
Heather Quintero, a math teacher who grew up in Lynchburg, acknowledges that it must be hard for some people to understand why female evangelicals would support Trump, given the way that he treats women.
She draws on her own experience as an evangelical Christian to help unravel the mystery. As a child, she says, she was taught church lessons such as: “My body does not belong to me.”
It “belonged first of all to my father”, she says. “When I was married, it would be given to my husband.”
Looking back, she sees a connection between these teachings and the support that female evangelicals have shown for Trump.
Evangelical women support Trump “because it’s what we’ve been socialised to do”, says Quintero – this means “placing your own well-being below the idea of stopping abortion”.
Many don’t like the way the president talks about women but support his conservative policies, she says.
Paula White, the president’s spiritual adviser, spoke to me recently near the White House about women’s issues and conservative politics.
She sympathises with the women who were disturbed by the Supreme Court hearing since she herself was “sexually and physically abused”.
She says: “I understand that pain.” Yet she applauds the appointment of Brett Kavanaugh, a Catholic who’s seen as “pro-life”.
She and other Christians applaud Trump and the vice-president, Mike Pence, both of whom are rock stars on the evangelical circuit.
One of their fans is Laurel Bryant, a college student from Amherst, a town near Lynchburg. I saw recently her in a Washington hotel during a “Values Voter” summit after she’d met Pence. “I’m shaking like a Chihuahua,” she says, describing her excitement.
Bryant says she hopes that Christian women will stay away from “feminist ideology” and recognise the importance of “compromise” – that means voting for candidates who may be flawed but who are fighting against abortion.
For Bryant and many evangelicals, that’s the key issue and seen through this light, the way the president treats women becomes less important.
But just as some evangelical women have expressed their unhappiness with the president, so have some men. Writing in USA Today, a Minneapolis pastor, Doug Pagitt, describes evangelicals: “Their insistence on walking in lockstep with the Republican Party often is primarily motivated by a single issue: abortion.”
Karen Swallow Prior, a Southern Baptist and an English professor at Liberty University, brought me into the world of evangelical women one autumn afternoon in a Main Street coffeehouse.
Prior is the author of a book entitled On Reading Well: Finding the Good Life through Great Books, and she introduces me to her friends, “Lynchburg Liberals” as she calls them.
These women range in age from 20 to post-retirement, and most are affiliated with the university. They’d be seen as conservatives in US cities because of their hardline stance on abortion but are viewed as progressives in Christian country because of the way they talk about gender issues and because they oppose the president.
They sat around a wooden table with lovers’ initials and a universal Christian symbol, the cross, carved into its surface. Outside the café, a student plays on a piano a “worship song” that he wrote himself.
Pickard’s grandfather gave her a Winchester rifle when she was in middle school, she tells me, and she grew up listening to Sean Hannity on her dad’s car radio.
Despite her conservative upbringing, she’s planning to vote for a Democrat, Tim Kaine, a Virginia senatorial candidate, instead of Stewart. “I’d like to vote for someone who won’t embarrass us,” Pickard says. Quintero says she’s also voting for Kaine.
Others baulk at voting for Democrats – but refuse to support the president’s candidates. Prior now tells me that she’ll vote for a libertarian. Another woman says she’ll write in Mickey Mouse, only half-joking.
Democrats have an edge in November’s elections, according to polls, but a key factor will be turnout.
“This is going to be so close,” White says. Ultimately the fate of the president, the US congress and state-level leaders could turn on a small number of votes cast by evangelical women.
On that day at the restaurant, Olsen says she doesn’t see herself as a radical.
Still she concedes that her decision to write in a name on a ballot rather than vote for Trump’s candidate is “a protest in some way”.
Fox News, the Turd Reich Propoganda Channel for their Hitler wanna-be dicktaker, and Putin Puppet, Donald J Trump pundits Sean “Handjob Hannity” Hannity, Tomi “Blonde Bimbo” Lahren, Tucker “Traitor” Carlson, Laura “White Trash Slut” Ingraham, Laura “Psychotic Liar” Ingle, Steven “The Pedophile Defender” Doocy, Jeanine “Hitler Wanna Be” Pirro, Brian “Dumbass” Kilmeade and many other Faux Nitwit Newsless personalities are responsible for promoting hate, bigotry, misogyny and outright lies that have gotten people murdered, attacked, terrorized and even an act of mass murder, but they sure the hell do not give a flying fuck they got blood on their hands and heads.
The constant lies that Handjob Hannity and the rest has spewed from their well used outhouse pieholes? Has caused people to be murdered, people to be attacked and many terroristic threats. Let’s take a look at just some of the results of these scumbag Treasonous Traitors to the United States and their lies and hate has caused shall we?
Aug. 19, 2015: In Boston, after he and his brother beat a sleeping homeless man of Mexican descent with a metal pole, Steven Leader, 30, told police “Donald Trump was right, all these illegals need to be deported.” The victim, however, was not in the United States illegally. The brothers, who are white, ultimately pleaded guilty to several assault-related charges and were each sentenced to at least two years in prison.
Dec. 5, 2015: After Penn State University student Nicholas Tavella, 19, was charged with “ethnic intimidation” and other crimes for threatening to “put a bullet” in a young Indian man on campus, his attorney argued in court that Tavella was just motivated by “a love of country,” not “hate.” “Donald Trump is running for President of the United States saying that, ‘We’ve got to check people out more closely,'” Tavella’s attorney argued in his defense. Tavella, who is white, ultimately pleaded guilty to ethnic intimidation and was sentenced to up to two years in prison.
SEAN “HANDJOB” HANNITY, RACIST, BIGOT, WHITE SUPREMACIST. SHITSTAIN ON THE UNDERWEAR OF HUMANITY. TREASONOUS TRAITOR. PUTIN PUPPET. HITLER DICK SUCKER. FAKE ASSED CHRISTOFASCIST PIG.
WHAT SEAN HANNITY AND THE OTHER WHITE SUPREMACIST SHITSTAINS ON THE UNDERWEAR OF HUMANITY LIKE HIM DO NOT REALIZE IS? HITLER WOULD HAVE SENT THIS PUNK TO HIS CAMPS TO TAKE A GAS SHOWER. CAUSE THIS TWISTED TROGLODYTE FOR FAUX NITWIT NEWSLESS? SURE THE FUCK DOES NOT FIT HITLERS IDEA OF HIS ARYIAN RACE.
SEAN HANNITY SHOULD FOLLOW IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF HIS HERO HITLER, TAKE A GUN SHOVE IT INTO HIS PATHOLOGICAL LYING, WELL USED OUTHOUSE PIEHOLE, PULL THE TRIGGER, AND BLOW HIS TREASONOUS BRAINS OUT.
April 28, 2016: When FBI agents arrested 61-year-old John Martin Roos in White City, Oregon, for threatening federal officials, including then-President Barack Obama, they found several pipe bombs and guns in his home. In the three months before his arrest, Roos posted at least 34 messages to Twitter about Trump, repeatedly threatening African Americans, Muslims, Mexican immigrants and the “liberal media,” and in court documents, prosecutors noted that the avowed Trump supporter posted this threatening message to Facebook a month earlier: “The establishment is trying to steal the election from Trump. … Obama is already on a kill list … Your [name] can be there too.” Roos, who is white, has since pleaded guilty to possessing an unregistered explosive device and posting internet threats against federal officials. He was sentenced to more than five years in prison.
June 3, 2016: After 54-year-old Henry Slapnik attacked his African-American neighbors with a knife in Cleveland, he told police “Donald Trump will fix them because they are scared of Donald Trump,” according to police reports. Slapnik, who is white, ultimately pleaded guilty to “ethnic intimidation” and other charges. It’s unclear what sentence he received.
I’ve heard some dumb ass bleached blondes in my lifetime, but never have I encountered such a mental midget moron, white supremacist, trailer park trash reject, piece of shit than this Trailer Park Trash Reject Psycho Tomi Lahren.
I mean the ameobas, eating the shit from the other ameobas asses, in this psychotic freakshows outhouse Tomi Lahren crawled out from after her mommy shit her out while taking a dump? Has more fucking intelligence than she does.
Aug. 16, 2016: In Olympia, Washington, 32-year-old Daniel Rowe attacked a white woman and a black man with a knife after seeing them kiss on a popular street. When police arrived on the scene, Rowe professed to being “a white supremacist” and said “he planned on heading down to the next Donald Trump rally and stomping out more of the Black Lives Matter group,” according to court documents filed in the case. Rowe, who is white, ultimately pleaded guilty to charges of assault and malicious harassment, and he was sentenced to more than four years in prison.
September 2016: After 40-year-old Mark Feigin of Los Angeles was arrested for posting anti-Muslim and allegedly threatening statements to a mosque’s Facebook page, his attorney argued in court that the comments were protected by the First Amendment because Feigin was “using similar language and expressing similar views” to “campaign statements from then-candidate Donald Trump.” Noting that his client “supported Donald Trump,” attorney Caleb Mason added that “Mr. Feigin’s comments were directed toward a pressing issue of public concern that was a central theme of the Trump campaign and the 2016 election generally: the Islamic roots of many international and U.S. terrorist acts.” Feigin, who is white, ultimately pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of sending harassing communications electronically. He was sentenced to probation.
Oct. 13, 2016: After the FBI arrested three white Kansas men for plotting to bomb an apartment complex in Garden City, Kansas, where many Somali immigrants lived, one of the men’s attorneys insisted to a federal judge that the plot was “self-defensive” because the three men believed “that if Donald Trump won the election, President Obama would not recognize the validity of those results, that he would declare martial law, and that at that point militias all over the country would have to step in.” Then, after a federal grand jury convicted 47-year-old Patrick Stein and the two other men of conspiracy-related charges, Stein’s attorney argued for a lighter sentence based on “the backdrop” of Stein’s actions: Trump had become “the voice of a lost and ignored white, working-class set of voters” like Stein, and the “climate” at the time could propel someone like Stein to “go to 11,” attorney Jim Pratt said in court. Stein and his two accomplices were each sentenced to at least 25 years in prison.
Look at this Hitler saluting troglodyte Fascist pig Laura Ingraham. She fucking thinks she is oh so special cause she is white. The trouble is with this bleached blonde bimbo? Hitler would have sent her? To his concentration camp for a gas shower.
Nov. 3, 2016: In Tampa, Florida, David Howard threatened to burn down the house next to his “simply because” it was being purchased by a Muslim family, according to the Justice Department. He later said under oath that while he harbored a years-long dislike for Muslims, the circumstances around the home sale were “the match that lit the wick.” He cited Trump’s warnings about immigrants from majority-Muslim countries. “[With] the fact that the president wants these six countries vetted, everybody vetted before they come over, there’s a concern about Muslims,” Howard said. Howard, who is white, ultimately pleaded guilty to a federal civil rights violation, and the 59-year-old was sentenced to eight months in prison
Nov. 10, 2016: A 23-year-old man from High Springs, Florida, allegedly assaulted an unsuspecting Hispanic man who was cleaning a parking lot outside of a local food store. “[H]e was suddenly struck in the back of the head,” a police report said of the victim. “[The victim] asked the suspect why he hit him, to which the suspect replied, ‘This is for Donald Trump.’ The suspect then grabbed [the victim] by the jacket and proceeded to strike him several more times,” according to the report. Surveillance video of the incident “completely corroborated [the victim’s] account of events,” police said. The suspect was arrested on battery charges, but the case was dropped after the victim decided not to pursue the matter, police said. Efforts by ABC News to reach the victim for further explanation were not successful.
Nov. 12, 2016: In Grand Rapids, Michigan, while attacking a cab driver from East Africa, 23-year-old Jacob Holtzlander shouted racial epithets and repeatedly yelled the word, “Trump,” according to law enforcement records. Holtzlander, who is white, ultimately pleaded guilty to a charge of ethnic intimidation, and he was sentenced to 30 days in jail.
an. 25, 2017: At JFK International Airport in New York, a female Delta employee, wearing a hijab in accordance with her Muslim faith, was “physically and verbally” attacked by 57-year-old Robin Rhodes of Worcester, Mass., “for no apparent reason,” prosecutors said at the time. When the victim asked Brown what she did to him, he replied: “You did nothing, but … [Expletive] Islam. [Expletive] ISIS. Trump is here now. He will get rid of all of you.” Rhodes ultimately pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of “menacing,” and he was sentenced to probation.
Feb. 19, 2017: After 35-year-old Gerald Wallace called a mosque in Miami Gardens, Florida, and threatened to “shoot all y’all,” he told the FBI and police that he made the call because he “got angry” from a local TV news report about a terrorist act. At a rally in Florida the day before, Trump falsely claimed that Muslim refugees had just launched a terrorist attack in Sweden.
Wallace’s attorney, Katie Carmon, later tried to convince a federal judge that the threat to kill worshippers could be “protected speech” due to the “very distinctly political climate” at the time. “There are courts considering President Trump’s travel ban … and the president himself has made some very pointed statements about what he thinks about people of this descent,” Carmon argued in court.
Wallace, who is African American, ultimately pleaded guilty to obstructing the free exercise of his victims’ religious beliefs, and he was sentenced to one year in prison.
Feb. 23, 2017: Kevin Seymour and his partner Kevin price were riding their bicycles in Key West, Florida, when a man on a moped, 30-year-old Brandon Davis of North Carolina, hurled anti-gay slurs at them and “intentionally” ran into Seymour’s bike, shouting, “You live in Trump country now,” according to police reports and Davis’ attorney. Davis ultimately pleaded guilty to a charge of battery evidencing prejudice, but in court, he expressed remorse and was sentenced to four years of probation.
May 3, 2017: In South Padre Island, Texas, 35-year-old Alexander Jennes Downing of Waterford, Connecticut, was captured on cellphone video taunting and aggressively approaching a Muslim family, repeatedly shouting, “Donald Trump will stop you!” and other Trump-related remarks. Police arrested downing, of Waterford, Connecticut, for public intoxication. It’s unclear what came of the charge.
Oct. 22, 2017: A 44-year-old California man threatened to kill Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., for her frequent criticism of Trump and her promise to “take out” the president. Anthony Scott Lloyd left a voicemail at the congresswoman’s Washington office, declaring: “If you continue to make threats towards the president, you’re going to wind up dead, Maxine. Cause we’ll kill you.” After pleading guilty to one count of threatening a U.S. official, Lloyd asked the judge for leniency, saying he suffered from addiction-inducing mental illness and became “far too immersed in listening to polarizing political commentators and engaging in heated political debates online.” His lawyer put it this way to the judge: “Mr. Lloyd was a voracious consumer of political news online, on television and on radio … [that are] commonly viewed as ‘right wing,’ unconditionally supportive of President Trump, and fiercely critical of anyone who opposed President Trump’s policies.” The judge sentenced Lloyd to six months of house arrest and three years of probation.
August 2018: After the Boston Globe called on news outlets around the country to resist what it called “Trump’s assault on journalism,” the Boston Globe received more than a dozen threatening phone calls. “You are the enemy of the people,” the alleged caller, 68-year-old Robert Chain of Encino, California, told a Boston Globe employee on Aug. 22. “As long as you keep attacking the President, the duly elected President of the United States … I will continue to threat[en], harass, and annoy the Boston Globe.” A week later, authorities arrested Chain on threat-related charges. After a hearing in his case, he told reporters, “America was saved when Donald J. Trump was elected president.” Chain has pleaded guilty to seven threat-related charges, and he is awaiting sentencing.
Oct. 4, 2018: The Polk County Sheriff’s Office in Florida arrested 53-year-old James Patrick of Winter Haven, Florida, for allegedly threatening “to kill Democratic office holders, members of their families and members of both local and federal law enforcement agencies,” according to a police report. In messages posted online, Patrick detailed a “plan” for his attacks, which he said he would launch if then-nominee Brett Kavanaugh was not confirmed as a Supreme Court justice, the police report said. Seeking Patrick’s release from jail after his arrest, Patrick’s attorney, Terri Stewart, told a judge that her client’s “rantings” were akin to comments from “a certain high-ranking official” — Trump. The president had “threatened the North Korean people — to blow them all up. It was on Twitter,” Stewart said, according to the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. Patrick has been charged with making a written threat to kill or injure, and he has pleaded not guilty. His trial is pending.
Late October 2018: Over the course of a week, Florida man Cesar Sayoc allegedly mailed at least 15 potential bombs to prominent critics of Trump and members of the media. Sayoc had been living in a van plastered with pro-Trump stickers, and he had posted several pro-Trump messages on social media. Federal prosecutors have accused him of “domestic terrorism,” and Sayoc has since pleaded guilty to 65 counts, including use of a weapon of mass destruction. He was sentenced to 20 years in prison. “We believe the president’s rhetoric contributed to Mr. Sayoc’s behavior,” Sayoc’s attorney told the judge at sentencing.
Dec. 4, 2018: Michael Brogan, 51, of Brooklyn, New York, left a voicemail at an unidentified U.S. Senator’s office in Washington insisting, “I’m going to put a bullet in ya. … You and your constant lambasting of President Trump. Oh, reproductive rights, reproductive rights.” He later told an FBI agent that before leaving the voicemail he became “very angry” by “an internet video of the Senator, including the Senator’s criticism of the President of the United States as well as the Senator’s views on reproductive rights.” “The threats were made to discourage the Senator from criticizing the President,” the Justice Department said in a later press release. Brogan has since pleaded guilty to one count of threatening a U.S. official, and he is awaiting sentencing.
Jan. 17, 2019: Stephen Taubert of Syracuse, New York, was arrested by the U.S. Capitol Police for threatening to kill Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., and for threatening to “hang” former President Barack Obama. Taubert used “overtly bigoted, hateful language” in his threats, according to federal prosecutors. On July 20, 2018, Taubert called the congresswoman’s Los Angeles office to say he would find her at public events and kill her and her entire staff. In a letter to the judge just days before Taubert’s trial began, his defense attorney, Courtenay McKeon, noted: “During that time period, Congresswoman Waters was embroiled in a public feud with the Trump administration. … On June 25, 2018, in response to Congresswoman Waters’ public statements, President Trump tweeted: ‘Congresswoman Maxine Waters, an extraordinarily low IQ person, has … just called for harm to supporters … of the Make America Great Again movement. Be careful what you wish for Max!'” As McKeon insisted to the judge: “This context is relevant to the case.” A federal jury ultimately convicted Taubert on three federal charges, including retaliating against a federal official and making a threat over state lines. He was sentenced to nearly four years in prison.
Jan. 22, 2019: David Boileau of Holiday, Florida, was arrested by the Pasco County Sheriff’s Office for allegedly burglarizing an Iraqi family’s home and “going through” their mailbox, according to a police report. After officers arrived at the home, Boileau “made several statements of his dislike for people of Middle Eastern descent,” the report said. “He also stated if he doesn’t get rid of them, Trump will handle it.” The police report noted that a day before, Boileau threw screws at a vehicle outside the family’s house. On that day, Boileau allegedly told police, “We’ll get rid of them one way or another.” Boileau, 58, has since pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of trespassing, and he was sentenced to 90 days in jail.
Feb. 15, 2019: The FBI in Maryland arrested a Marine veteran and U.S. Coast Guard lieutenant, Christopher Paul Hasson, who they said was stockpiling weapons and “espoused” racist and anti-immigrant views for years as he sought to “murder innocent civilians on a scale rarely seen in this country.” In court documents, prosecutors said the 49-year-old “domestic terrorist” compiled a “hit list” of prominent Democrats. Two months later, while seeking Hasson’s release from jail before trial, his public defender, Elizabeth Oyer, told a federal judge: “This looks like the sort of list that our commander-in-chief might have compiled while watching Fox News in the morning. … Is it legitimately frustrating that offensive language and ideology has now become part of our national vocabulary? Yes, it is very frustrating. But … it is hard to differentiate it from the random musings of someone like Donald Trump who uses similar epithets in his everyday language and tweets.” Hasson faces weapons-related charges and was being detained as he awaits trial. He has pleaded not guilty.
March 16, 2019: Anthony Comello, 24, of Staten Island, New York, was taken into custody for allegedly killing Francesco “Franky Boy” Cali, the reputed head of the infamous Gambino crime family. It marked the first mob boss murder in New York in 30 years, law enforcement officials told ABC News the murder may have stemmed from Comello’s romantic relationship with a Cali family member. Court documents since filed in state court by Comello’s defense attorney, Robert Gottlieb, said Comello suffers from mental defect and was a believer in the “conspiratorial fringe right-wing political group” QAnon. In addition, Gottlieb wrote: “Beginning with the election of President Trump in November 2016, Anthony Comello’s family began to notice changes to his personality. … Mr. Comello became certain that he was enjoying the protection of President Trump himself, and that he had the president’s full support. Mr. Comello grew to believe that several well-known politicians and celebrities were actually members of the Deep State, and were actively trying to bring about the destruction of America.” Comello has been charged with one count of murder and two counts of criminal possession of a weapon. His trial is pending, and he has pleaded not guilty.
April 5, 2019: The FBI arrested a 55-year-old man from upstate New York for allegedly threatening to kill Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., one of the first two Muslim women elected to the U.S. Congress. She is an outspoken critic of Trump, and Trump has frequently launched public attacks against her and three other female lawmakers of color. Two weeks before his arrest, Patrick Carlineo Jr. allegedly called Omar’s office in Washington labeling the congresswoman a “terrorist” and declaring: “I’ll put a bullet in her f—-ing skull.” When an FBI agent then traced the call to Carlineo and interviewed him, Carlineo “stated that he was a patriot, that he loves the President, and that he hates radical Muslims in our government,” according to the FBI agent’s summary of the interview. Federal prosecutors charged Carlineo with threatening to assault and murder a United States official. Carlineo is awaiting trial, although his defense attorney and federal prosecutors are working on what his attorney called another “possible resolution” of the case.
April 18, 2019: The FBI arrested John Joseph Kless of Tamarac, Florida, for calling the Washington offices of three prominent Democrats and threatening to kill each of them. At his home, authorities found a loaded handgun in a backpack, an AR-15 rifle and hundreds of rounds of ammunition. In later pleading guilty to one charge of transmitting threats over state lines, Kless admitted that in a threatening voicemail targeting Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., he stated: “You won’t f—ing tell Americans what to say, and you definitely don’t tell our president, Donald Trump, what to say.” Tlaib, a vocal critic of Trump, was scheduled to speak in Florida four days later. Kless was awaiting sentencing. In a letter to the federal judge, he said he “made a very big mistake,” never meant to hurt anyone, and “was way out of line with my language and attitude.”
April 24, 2019: The FBI arrested 30-year-old Matthew Haviland of North Kingstown, Rhode Island, for allegedly sending a series of violent and threatening emails to a college professor in Massachusetts who publicly expressed support for abortion rights and strongly criticized Trump. In one of 28 emails sent to the professor on March 10, 2019, Haviland allegedly called the professor “pure evil” and said “all Democrats must be eradicated,” insisting the country now has “a president who’s taking our country in a place of more freedom rather than less.” In another email the same day, Haviland allegedly wrote the professor: “I will rip every limb from your body and … I will kill every member of your family.” According to court documents, Haviland’s longtime friend later told the FBI that “within the last year, Haviland’s views regarding abortion and politics have become more extreme … at least in part because of the way the news media portrays President Trump.” Haviland has been charged with cyberstalking and transmitting a threat in interstate commerce. His trial is pending.
June 5, 2019: The FBI arrested a Utah man for allegedly calling the U.S. Capitol more than 2,000 times over several months and threatening to kill Democratic lawmakers, whom he said were “trying to destroy Trump’s presidency.” “I am going to take up my second amendment right, and shoot you liberals in the head,” 54-year-old Scott Brian Haven allegedly stated in one of the calls on Oct. 18, 2018, according to charging documents. When an FBI agent later interviewed Haven, he “explained the phone calls were made during periods of frustration with the way Democrats were treating President Trump,” the charging documents said. The FBI visit, however, didn’t stop Haven from making more threats, including: On March 21, 2019, he called an unidentified U.S. senator’s office to say that if Democrats refer to Trump as Hitler again he will shoot them, and two days later he called an unidentified congressman’s office to say he “was going to take [the congressman] out … because he is trying to remove a duly elected President.” A federal grand jury has since charged Haven with one count of transmitting a threat over state lines. Haven pleaded not guilty and was awaiting trial.
Aug. 3, 2019: A gunman opened fire at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, killing 22 people and injuring 24 others. The FBI labeled the massacre an act of “domestic terrorism,” and police determined that the alleged shooter, 21-year-old Patrick Crusius, posted a lengthy anti-immigrant diatribe online before the attack. “We attribute that manifesto directly to him,” according to El Paso police chief Greg Allen. Describing the coming assault as “a response to the Hispanic invasion of Texas,” the screed’s writer said “the media” would “blame Trump’s rhetoric” for the attack but insisted his anti-immigrant views “predate Trump” — an apparent acknowledgement that at least some of his views align with some of Trump’s public statements. The writer began his online essay by stating that he generally “support[s]” the previous writings of the man who killed 51 Muslim worshippers in New Zealand earlier this year. In that case, the shooter in New Zealand said he absolutely did not support Trump as “a policy maker and leader” — but “[a]s a symbol of renewed white identity and common purpose? Sure.” Crusius has been charged with capital murder by the state of Texas.
So let’s take Handjob Hannity, who proclaims himself a Christian but even Jesus Christ himself would walk up to this pathological lying, false witness bearing, Pharisee for ChristoTalibans and ChristoFascist pig fuckers, and of course pathological lying, adulterous, rapist, pedo pervert, thief and con-artist and Putin Puppet Donald J Trump everywhere and punch him in his Cocksuckers for Traitor Trump well used outhouse piehole.
Though Sean Hannity and Adolph Hitler’s Propoganda Minister Joseph Goebbels have a whole lot in common, just like Traitor Trump and Adolph Hitler have a lot in common? The one thing none of these four Fascist pig fuckers have in common with a True Christian is the fact? They are not Christians at all. Even though they proclaimed themselves Christians.
A True Christian, Sean Hannity follows ALL the teachings of Jesus Christ. Most especially? The two greatest commandments, which rise above all the rest and even the Prophets. Those two commandments are actually the basis for all the other teachings of Jesus Christ and the New Testament. Teachings such as helping the poor, feeding the hungry, housing the homeless, and yeah, you fucking piece of shit assclown for ChristoFascists, treating immigrants as if they were members of your own family. They also do not lie or bear false witness, nor defend and support pathological lying adulterers who sold us out to Russia.
But Sean, I know damn well you and your fellow supposed ChristoFascist scumbag shitstains on the underwear of humanity at Fox News have never really read your bibles. You basically cherry-pick what you want to use from the bible to justify your hatred and your bigotry and your misogyny and your lies and your bearing false witness, but you are nothing more than the money changers, the Pharisees and Saduccees that Jesus himself condemned so much.
Matter of fact? Your version of Jesus? Is nothing like the real version of Jesus. The version of your ChristoFascist White Supremacist Jesus? Should actually be declared the real Satan of Christianity. And you and the rest of your disgusting fellow ChristoFascist scumbags should be called the demonic ones.
But here? I am going to violate one of the biblical NT rules and throw some bible verses on how you are supposed to treat immigrants, like I am throwing pearls before pig swines like you.
So let me teach you Sean Hannity, and all the rest of your lying Fox News pundits how the bible tells you, you are supposed to treat foreigners and immigrants.
Leviticus 19:33,34 : ‘When a stranger resides with you in your land, you shall not do him wrong.’The stranger who resides with you shall be to you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt; I am the LORD your God.
Leviticus 24:22: ‘There shall be one standard for you; it shall be for the stranger as well as the native, for I am the LORD your God.'”
Exodus 22: 21: You shall not wrong a stranger or oppress him, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.
Exodus 23: 9: “You shall not oppress a stranger, since you yourselves know the feelings of a stranger, for you also were strangers in the land of Egypt.
Deuteronomy 10:18-19: He executes justice for the fatherless and the widow, and loves the sojourner, giving him food and clothing. Love the sojourner, therefore, for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt.
Deuteronomy 24:17: “You shall not pervert the justice due an alien or an orphan, nor take a widow’s garment in pledge.
Deuteronomy 27:19: ‘Cursed is he who distorts the justice due an alien, orphan, and widow.’ And all the people shall say, ‘Amen.
Malachi 3:5: “Then I will draw near to you for judgment. I will be a swift witness against the sorcerers, against the adulterers, against those who swear falsely, against those who oppress the hired worker in his wages, the widow and the fatherless, against those who thrust aside the sojourner, and do not fear me, says the Lord of hosts.
Hebrews 13:2: Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.
Psalms 146:9: The Lord watches over the sojourners; he upholds the widow and the fatherless, but the way of the wicked he brings to ruin.
Matthew 25:35: For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me,
Jeremiah 7:5-7: “For if you truly amend your ways and your deeds, if you truly execute justice one with another, if you do not oppress the sojourner, the fatherless, or the widow, or shed innocent blood in this place, and if you do not go after other gods to your own harm, then I will let you dwell in this place, in the land that I gave of old to your fathers forever.
Jeremiah 22:3-5: Thus says the Lord: Do justice and righteousness, and deliver from the hand of the oppressor him who has been robbed. And do no wrong or violence to the resident alien, the fatherless, and the widow, nor shed innocent blood in this place. For if you will indeed obey this word, then there shall enter the gates of this house kings who sit on the throne of David, riding in chariots and on horses, they and their servants and their people. But if you will not obey these words, I swear by myself, declares the Lord, that this house shall become a desolation.
Ezekiel 47: 21-23: “So you shall divide this land among you according to the tribes of Israel. You shall allot it as an inheritance for yourselves and for the sojourners who reside among you and have had children among you. They shall be to you as native-born children of Israel. With you they shall be allotted an inheritance among the tribes of Israel. In whatever tribe the sojourner resides, there you shall assign him his inheritance, declares the Lord God.
1 Kings 8:41-43: “Likewise, when a foreigner, who is not of your people Israel, comes from a far country for your name’s sake (for they shall hear of your great name and your mighty hand, and of your outstretched arm), when he comes and prays toward this house, hear in heaven your dwelling place and do according to all for which the foreigner calls to you, in order that all the peoples of the earth may know your name and fear you, as do your people Israel, and that they may know that this house that I have built is called by your name.
Zechariah 7:10: Do not oppress the widow, the fatherless, the sojourner, or the poor, and let none of you devise evil against another in your heart.”
Numbers 15:15,16: For the assembly, there shall be one statute for you and for the stranger who sojourns with you, a statute forever throughout your generations. You and the sojourner shall be alike before the Lord. One law and one rule shall be for you and for the stranger who sojourns with you.”
I expect Traitor Donald J Trump to play pretend at being a Christian. He has in fact proved many times by his actions, words and deeds he is no Christian. But you Sean? YOU proclaim how you are a Christian all the time. And we especially love your ChristoFascist bullshit lies and false witness against the supposed attacks on Christmas. Hey asshole, fuck you and your Christmas.
Here are a few examples of Sean Hannity’s ChristoFascist Christianity and his constantly disgusting bullshit on the supposed Fake War on Christmas.
Sean Hannity Says ‘CHRISTMAS IS UNDER SIEGE’ as Twitter Users Have a Field Day at His Expense
https://www.newsweek.com/sean-hannity-says-christmas-under-siege-twitter-users-have-field-day-his-1246446
Jill Zarin Smacks Down Hannity Re The So-Called “War On Christmas”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Two3fU2ZKUY
Twitter Users Mock Hannity’s Panicky New ‘War On Christmas’ Rant
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/sean-hannity-war-on-christmas-panic_n_5c08ab7ee4b069028dc66e97
But day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, we have heard Sean Hannity of Fox News proclaim he is a Christian and each and every damn day? Sean Hannity? Proves, by his words, actions and deeds? He is no Christian.
Sean Hannity, you sold out your Jesus, your God, and your religion. You are noTrue Christian, because above all else? A True Christian follows the two greatest commandments of their Jesus, the Lord and Savior they proclaim to follow, especially the one where they are to love ALL their neighbors, as they are supposed to love their god, with all of their hearts all of their souls, all of their minds and all of their bodies and as they love themselves. Whether those neighbors happen to be an immigrant, an lgbt, an atheist, a Democrat, a liberal, or any one else for that matter. Which, with all the hate and bigotry and misogyny you have spewed out of your piehole, along with all the bearing false witness, and outright fucking lies you have shot out of your disgusting mouth? Proves you are no adherant to Jesus Christ or any of his teachings.
So how can Sean Hannity, the hate spreading, bigotry spreading, misogynist shit spreading, racists and bigots of Fox New call himself a True Christian, with all the hate in his heart he have spewed from his well used outhouse shithole he call his mouth, against lgbts, atheists, Pagans Muslims, and of course? Immigrants and still call himself a Christian? Even Jesus would reject him and his brand of Reich-Wing, White Supremacist, ChristoTaliban Christianity and any one like him who spews the same shit from their mouths that he does.
This is not being a Christian in the least bit. This is in fact? Anti-Christ actions and actions of the one Christians call Satan. These people are not Christ-like but Satan-like, especially in all the deceptions and pathological lies they spew on a daily basis.
Now here is a prime example of Sean Hannity of FOX News spewing lies and bearing false witness againstLGBTS and the AIDS epidemic, spewing homophopic comments that actually got old Sean fired from his job at UCSB. This is part of showing just how much Sean Hannity is no Christian.
That Time Sean Hannity Got Fired for Homophobic Comments… and Went to the ACLU for Help (Podcast)
https://www.thewrap.com/sean-hannity-kimmel-ucsb-aclu-gay-aids-santa-barbara-fox-news/
An exerpt:
Fox News host Sean Hannity’s career began the last place you might expect: on the liberal campus of UC Santa Barbara, where he hosted a shock-jock radio show in which he tore into the news media and offered up flatly wrong theories about AIDS.
It was 1989. Hannity was a 27-year-old college dropout from Long Island when he scored a job at UCSB’s radio station. But, as the Washington Post reported, he was soon fired for offenses that included egging on a guest “who claimed that AIDS was spreading among gay men because they consumed each other’s feces,” and telling a lesbian mother he felt sorry for her child. The details — and what he did next — are the subject of our new “Shoot This Now” podcast, which you can listen on Apple or Spotify or here:
Now here is just one of the many lies and false witness that Sean Hannity has spewed just against immigrants, using Politifacts page about him:
https://www.politifact.com/personalities/sean-hannity/
Sean Hannity says 642,000 crimes recently committed against Texans by illegal immigrants
Rated a lie by Politifact.
https://www.politifact.com/texas/statements/2018/mar/23/sean-hannity/sean-hannity-642000-crimes-committed-immigrants-il/
Four years ago, then-Gov. Rick Perry misrepresented state-posted numbers and inaccurately claimed that thousands of Texas murders had lately been committed by unauthorized immigrants.
More recently, Fox News commentator Sean Hannity drew our attention when he dipped into the same pool of figures on his March 7, 2018 program, saying to a guest: “I went down to the border–I’ll give you facts–because I was on horseback, all-terrain vehicle, I was in helicopters, I was in boats and I sat through a security briefing in Texas with Rick Perry — 642,000 crimes committed by illegal immigrants against Texans alone.
“Here’s my question: Putting all those issues aside,” Hannity said, “those that commit crimes in America, including some violent crimes, even murder, those criminal aliens, do you support having them removed from this country?”
“Absolutely, I have no problem with that,” news broadcaster Jorge Ramos replied. “I’m not here to defend real criminals.”
Hannity then showed a video clip from a July 2014 Texas presentation on 642,000 “criminal offenses” committed by “criminal immigrants” that Hannity saw alongside Perry during a visit to McAllen on the Texas-Mexico border.
Hannity said next to Ramos: “Are you literally saying to me that they’re lying? Because they’re not.” Hannity subsequently asked: “You sound like you don’t care about the Americans who are victims of crime. … You’re not answering my question; 642,000 crimes committed against Texans alone in a seven-year period; that’s not your family, Jorge. Where’s your sympathy for those victims of crime and why shouldn’t we take those that are committing crimes and get rid of them tomorrow?” Hannity closed the segment by asking Ramos to come to Texas for a program devoted to the 642,000 crime victims.
We decided to fact-check Hannity’s claim that criminal immigrants committed 642,000 crimes against Texans in recent years.
Hannity relies on 2014 presentation
In the portion of the Texas presentation shown by Hannity, two state officials and Hannity face a slide headlined “Criminal Alien Offenses, October 2008 to July 2014,” as an unidentified presenter says that more than 200,000 criminal immigrants are responsible for about 642,000 criminal offenses. Perry then tells Hannity: “That’s the cost of not securing the border.”
More recently, Fox News commentator Sean Hannity drew our attention when he dipped into the same pool of figures on his March 7, 2018 program, saying to a guest: “I went down to the border–I’ll give you facts–because I was on horseback, all-terrain vehicle, I was in helicopters, I was in boats and I sat through a security briefing in Texas with Rick Perry — 642,000 crimes committed by illegal immigrants against Texans alone.
“Here’s my question: Putting all those issues aside,” Hannity said, “those that commit crimes in America, including some violent crimes, even murder, those criminal aliens, do you support having them removed from this country?”
“Absolutely, I have no problem with that,” news broadcaster Jorge Ramos replied. “I’m not here to defend real criminals.”
Hannity then showed a video clip from a July 2014 Texas presentation on 642,000 “criminal offenses” committed by “criminal immigrants” that Hannity saw alongside Perry during a visit to McAllen on the Texas-Mexico border.
Hannity said next to Ramos: “Are you literally saying to me that they’re lying? Because they’re not.” Hannity subsequently asked: “You sound like you don’t care about the Americans who are victims of crime. … You’re not answering my question; 642,000 crimes committed against Texans alone in a seven-year period; that’s not your family, Jorge. Where’s your sympathy for those victims of crime and why shouldn’t we take those that are committing crimes and get rid of them tomorrow?” Hannity closed the segment by asking Ramos to come to Texas for a program devoted to the 642,000 crime victims.
We decided to fact-check Hannity’s claim that criminal immigrants committed 642,000 crimes against Texans in recent years.
Jorge Ramos: Cannot criminalize entire immigrant population
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bAD9jNEF32M
SOURCE: Excerpt from YouTube video showing Sean Hannity interview of Jorge Ramos, Hannity, Fox News Network, March 7, 2018 (3:30 mark)
To our inquiry, Carly Shanahan, a Fox News spokeswoman, said by email that Hannity relied on the presentation for his claim. Shanahan provided this transcript of the excerpted presentation:
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: “Criminal aliens have been responsible for about 642,000 offenses, criminal offenses. You look up there in the top left, sexual assaults, there’s close to 8,000 victims.”
HANNITY: “Six hundred and forty-two thousand crimes since –“
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: “In 2008.”
HANNITY: “In Texas alone?”
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: “Yes.”
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: “Over 200,000 individuals with a criminal history, they committed over 642,000 crimes.”
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: “That’s the cost of not securing the border.”
Fact-checking Perry in 2014
In gauging Hannity’s tally, it’s worth revisiting our 2014 fact-check of Perry. Perry, we found, had recapped arrests, not convictions, encompassing the lifetimes of individuals arrested over a recent period. Also, it looked to us like not all the arrested people were necessarily living here illegally.
When we inquired into the figures aired by Perry, Tom Vinger of the Texas Department of Public Safety pointed us to an agency web page, “Texas Criminal Alien Arrest Data,” that said: “From October 2008 through July 1, 2014, Texas has identified a total of 203,685 unique criminal alien defendants booked into Texas county jails. Over their criminal careers, these defendants are responsible for at least 642,564 individual criminal charges mostly consisting of Class B misdemeanors or higher, including 3,070 homicides and 7,964 sexual assaults.” We didn’t spot any breakout of convictions. Vinger told us generally that the agency didn’t have additional information.
Criminologists commented
A couple of outside criminologists who reviewed the DPS-posted information at our request told us the presented tally of charges–not convictions–did not support Perry’s attribution of homicides to immigrants.
Michael Walker, an adjunct professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York and an expert in how the FBI gathers crime statistics, said by phone that the DPS presentation telescoped the arrest histories of the 203,685 individuals put in county jails in the 69 months that were reviewed. “Where did they offend–Texas? Oklahoma? Mississippi?” Walker said, his point being that such information wasn’t on the web page.
Walker and Ramiro Martinez, Jr., a Northeastern University professor, each noted another weakness; the DPS presentation mixed together recent charges with those that might have been leveled decades before.
Checking afresh in 2018
So, what of Hannity’s statement attributing 642,000 crimes against Texans to immigrants over a recent period?
After Hannity spoke, we reached out afresh to the DPS. By email, Vinger pointed us to an updated agency web page stating that some 245,000 “criminal aliens” booked into local Texas jails from June 2011 through February 2018 had together through their “criminal careers” been charged with more than 650,000 offenses.
Those charges, the department says, resulted in more than 291,000 convictions “including 566 homicide convictions; 29,164 assault convictions; 9,060 burglary convictions; 38,287 drug convictions; 274 kidnapping convictions; 20,082 theft convictions; 24,451 obstructing police convictions; 2,202 robbery convictions; 3,244 sexual assault convictions; and 4,036 weapon convictions.” Also, according to the agency’s post, some 66 percent of the convictions–over 193,000–were associated with individuals identified by their Homeland Security status as being in the U.S. illegally at the time of their latest arrest.
Upshot: The DPS says that some 245,000 “criminal aliens” booked into Texas jails over 81 recent months had in their lifetimes accumulated 291,000-plus convictions with nearly 7 in 10 of the convictions tied to 193,000 individuals identified as living in the country without legal permission at their latest arrest.
These tallies, we otherwise noticed, roll in many nonviolent offenses. An accompanying chart shows that 358,996 of the criminal-career charges (66 percent of them) and 159,951 of the convictions (55 percent) were for offenses other than the agency’s specific listed categories of homicide, assault, burglary, kidnapping, drug or weapons violations, sexual assault, robbery, obstructing police or theft. The web page doesn’t say what those other offenses are.
Criminologists revisited
We also circled back to the criminologists who helped us analyze Perry’s claim. Neither saw substance to Hannity’s claim attributing 642,000 crimes to criminal immigrants over recent years.
Walker noted that the Texas chart cited by Hannity tallies “offenses,” not “crimes.” Offenses, Walker said, refer to misdeeds drawing no more than six months in jail meaning the 642,000 figure aired by Hannity conflates crimes and lesser offenses.
A finer sort of the DPS-posted counts might deliver meaningful information, Walker suggested. As it is, he said by phone, the tallied “drug offenses could be for having a joint or trafficking heroin. Weapon offenses” could involve a knife or gun or other weapon. Walker added by email that the category titled “All Other Offenses” on the DPS chart could refer to “such low-level acts as being a runaway, public intoxication and minor drug use charges.” Also, the inclusion of many lesser offenses might leave a misimpression, Walker said. “A person could conceivably be a lifetime serial shoplifter,” Walker speculated, or repeatedly charged with vagrancy.
By email, Martinez similarly advised that it’s hard to discern what the DPS figures mean without specific definitions of each listed crime category. Martinez said: “What is ‘obstructing police?’ ‘Weapons?’” Generally, he wrote, the DPS tallies reflect what’s known about most U.S. crime–a “sea of minor drug and property crimes.”
Our ruling
Hannity told Ramos that 642,000 crimes were committed against Texans by criminal immigrants in a recent seven-year period.
This claim misrepresents a 2014 state presentation indicating that more than 200,000 immigrants jailed in the state over a recent 69-month period had accumulated in their lifetimes 642,000 charges–not convictions. Not all the immigrants were living in the state illegally at the time of their latest arrest.
We rate the claim False.
So lets see what the bible has to say about this supposed Christian, Sean Hannity’s actions of bearing false witness and lying:
Proverbs 19:5: A false witness will not go unpunished, and he who breathes out lies will not escape.
Proverbs 6:16-19: There are six things that the Lord hates, seven that are an abomination to him: haughty eyes, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked plans, feet that make haste to run to evil, a false witness who breathes out lies, and one who sows discord among brothers.
Exodus 20:16: You shall not bear false witness against your neighbors.
John 8:44: You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and has nothing to do with the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies.
Revelations 21:8: But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, as for murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death.”
Exodus 23:1-2: “You shall not spread a false report. You shall not join hands with a wicked man to be a malicious witness. You shall not fall in with the many to do evil, nor shall you bear witness in a lawsuit, siding with the many, so as to pervert justice,
Deuteronomy 19:15-21: “A single witness shall not suffice against a person for any crime or for any wrong in connection with any offense that he has committed. Only on the evidence of two witnesses or of three witnesses shall a charge be established. If a malicious witness arises to accuse a person of wrongdoing, then both parties to the dispute shall appear before the Lord, before the priests and the judges who are in office in those days. The judges shall inquire diligently, and if the witness is a false witness and has accused his brother falsely, then you shall do to him as he had meant to do to his brother. So you shall purge the evil from your midst. And the rest shall hear and fear, and shall never again commit any such evil among you.
Matthew 7:21-23: “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.
Well Sean, it looks like, from all the verses of the Bible I have posted?
1. YOU are not a Christian.
2. Even your own Jesus whom you proclaim to follow would reject you.
3. Looks like it is yourself who is going to be spending an eternity in hell.
YES, SEAN HANNITY, YOU CERTAINLY ARE NO CHRISTIAN, LET ALONE SHOULD YOU EVER CALL YOURSELF A HUMAN BEING. YOU ARE A PATHOLOGICAL LIAR LIKE YOUR HERO TRUMP. YOU ARE A BIGOT, RACIST, WHITE SUPREMACIST CUNT WHO WOULD HAVE BEEN SENT TO HITLERS OWN DEATH CAMPS BECAUSE YOU CERTAINLY DO NOT FIT HIS IDEA OF WHAT AN ARYIAN SUPERIOR HUMAN IS. JUST LIKE HITLER WOULD SEND TRAITOR TRUMP, ALL HIS TRUMPANZEES, MUCH OF THE GOP AND MUCH OF THE CHRISTOFASCIST PIG FUCKERS LIKE YOU? TO HIS NAZI CONCENTRATION CAMPS, BECAUSE AGAIN, NOT ONE SINGLE ONE OF YOU FIT HIS ARYIAN NATION SUPERHUMAN OF BLOND HAIR, BLUE EYED GENIUSES.
NO SEAN, YOU ARE A SCUMBAG PIECE OF SHIT ONE WHO SPEWS WELL PROVEN LIES AND FALSEHOODS FROM YOUR WELL USED OUTHOUSE SHITHOLE YOU CALL A MOUTH.
NO SEAN, YOU ARE NOT GOING TO GO TO HEAVEN, YOU ARE GOING TO BURN FOR ALL ETERNITY IN THAT CHRISTIAN HELL YOU OH SO LOVE TO SPEAK ABOUT.
NOW SHUT THE FUCK UP SEAN HANNITY AND DO THE WORLD A FAVOR. TAKE A GUN, SHOVE IT UP YOUR FAT, PATHOLOGICAL LYING, PEVERTED, TREASONOUS ASS, PULL THE TRIGGER AND BLOW YOUR FUCKING BRAINS OUT.
Atheist Militants Rising 
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