Alt National Park Service-Who’s ready for next Saturday? The biggest No Kings Rally is expected to be in St. Paul and a lot of our people will be attending!
ME-Time to start selling bumper stickers: I would rather be in the Twin Cities-U R our role model.
In addition to Jane Fonda and Joan Baez and Maggie Rogers...Bernie is speaking is speaking at the MN rally
opening thoughts
Evangelical pastor Brooks Potteiger appeared on the Reformation Red Pill podcast last week. Potteiger has been called Hegseth’s closest spiritual adviser, while the defense secretary has appeared on four episodes of the extreme Christian nationalist podcast. The episode, titled “James Talarico Believes Christians are Idiots. Is He Right?” is hosted by Joshua Haymes, a previous intern at Potteiger’s Pilgrim Hill church. Talarico, 36, is a Presbyterian seminarian whose profile has risen after he defeated Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett in the Democratic primary election earlier this month for U.S. Senate.
That has led to Republicans digging through his previous comments on religion, including his 2021 comment that “God is nonbinary.” In the 18-minute podcast, Haymes and Potteiger react to clips from Talarico, who has been open about his Christian faith, talking about religion.
The footage includes the Democrat discussing how being pro-choice is “absolutely consistent” with Christianity and defending the transgender community in Texas as “something we have to do every day.”
The pair compares Talarico, who is running to unseat Texas Sen. John Cornyn, a Republican, to various predatory animals, with Haymes calling him a “demon” and a “snake”, while Potteiger says he is a “wolf.”
“He is presenting himself as a Christian in order to distort what Christianity is and to lead people away from Christ towards the teachings of demons,” Haymes adds.
After commenting on more videos of Talarico, the pair then ended their podcast with Haymes saying of the Democrat, “First and foremost we pray that a man like this would be cut to the heart.” He said he puts Talarico in the category of “public enemies,” or those you “are not called to love.”
Haymes continues, “I pray that God kills him. Ultimately, that means killing his heart and raising him up to new life in Christ.”
“Right. Right. We want him crucified with Christ,” Potteiger adds.
“I want him to be, I think, Saul of Tarsus,” Potteiger adds, referencing the religious figure also known as the Apostle Paul, who initially persecuted early Christians before converting to Christianity. “Talarico of Tarsus. Yes. That’s what I want.”
“Yes, we want death and new life,” Haymes says. “And if it would not be within God’s will to do so, stop him by any means necessary.”
Pentagon Press Secretary Kingsley Wilson told the Daily Beast: “The Fake News Media, and sometimes anti-Christian media, are deliberately twisting the words of Pastor Potteiger in order to attack him and Secretary Hegseth while advancing a partisan narrative.”
In the podcast, the pair discuss Talarico’s increasing media profile, especially after his victory this month, with Haymes noting, “The fact he has ascended, the fact Stephen Colbert and all the other late-night hosts were pushing him as the new rising star and he is far more radical than even some of the radicals of their party right now.”
The Democrat addressed the comments in the podcast in a social media post on Tuesday, writing, “Jesus loves. Christian Nationalism kills. You may pray for my death, Pastor, but I still love you. I love you more than you could ever hate me.”