President Donald Trump was elected with overwhelming support of white evangelical voters, thanks in part to Christian nationalist leaders, media outlets, and activist networks that now function as virtual 24/7 public relations operations for Trump and his regime. Relentless pro-Trump propaganda wrapped in the language of faith undoubtedly helps explain how Trump maintains his strong support from conservative Christian voters despite his regime’s corruption, cruelty, and dishonesty.
After ICE agents killed Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, some conservatives criticized administration officials for blatantly lying about the killings and dishonestly smearing the victims. But many of Trump’s religious-right supporters helped promote the false narratives and victim-smearing deployed by Trump regime officials, suggesting that the murdered people were to blame for their own deaths.
Just a few examples:
- Longtime religious-right activist Gary Bauer promoted the evidence-free claim by the Department of Homeland Security that murdered Veterans Affairs ICU nurse Alex Pretti “wanted to…massacre law enforcement.” On Monday he tweeted, “What’s happening in Minneapolis is a well-organized insurrection!”
- Dominionist and MAGA activist Sean Feucht has been actively promoting official pro-ICE narratives on social media, declaring that we are in a “propaganda war.”
- Right-wing evangelical writer Megan Basham insisted that activists defending their neighbors from ICE brutality “are the one’s exhibiting tyranny.” After millions of American had seen video of the unjustifiable killing of Pretti with their own eyes, Basham argued that describing ICE as executing people is “irresponsible and dishonest.”
- Christian nationalist and MAGA insider William Wolfe snidely responded “woke” when a Christian college professor described the statement from Alex Pretti’s family as “heartbreaking.” Wolfe has energetically defended ICE and promoted false claims that Pretti was holding a gun when ICE agents tackled him.
- Eric Metaxas, a pundit with a cultish devotion to Trump, declared, “Alex Pretti was a soldier of the Marxist left” which he said is “at war w/WETHEPEOPLE.” In another tweet he described resistance to ICE as “an attack on the nation” and said we are in a civil war.
- Propagandist “prophet” Lance Wallnau wrote Saturday, “I don’t care how much the news keeps twisting this to make Trump look bad. The demons are manifesting in Minnesota because there’s a deliverance service going on.” He also basically blamed Pretti for being killed, claiming falsely that Pretti was “violently resisting.”
- White Christian nationalist Stephen Turley has celebrated the prosecution of anti-ICE activists as part of Trump’s “war on woke,” Trump’s supposed “Greenland Victory,” and the president’s ludicrous “Board of Peace.”
In addition to pastors and pundits like those above, Trump benefits from political propaganda pumped out by networks like the National Faith Advisory Board and Intercessors for America and its White House Prayer Team project:
- The National Faith Advisory Board, started by Trump adviser Paula White Cain after the 2020 election as a way to continue the pro-Trump organizing she had done from the White House during the first term, promotes Trump and his administration’s priorities—even the new Melania movie—through email alerts, social media, and webinars for religious leaders. Not surprisingly, NFAB is promoting ICE narratives about violence in Minnesota, describing ICE agents in a Monday email as “American heroes.” During the 2024 campaign, NFAB sponsored events featuring Trump at which religious-right leaders told viewers that Trump had been chosen by God to lead America.
- Intercessors for America, a network of pro-Trump prayer warriors, promotes White House messaging through its newsletters and regular prayer calls. A Jan. 24 IFA post was typical propaganda in the form of a prayer: “Lord Jesus, the Minnesota anti-ICE protests are causing waves of division and hatred across our nation. Propaganda and outright lies are causing much confusion and chaos. Have mercy on our people and direct them to truth and justice.” What followed was a screed against the city’s mayor and the supposed “unchecked lawlessness and chaos” being caused by people who in reality are protesting the actual lawlessness and chaos being inflicted on the city by Trump’s masked militia. IFA complained Tuesday about that former President Barack Obama “stokes anti-ICE sentiment” and urged people to pray “for an end to the anti-ICE chaos in America!”
Previous IFA prayer guides have promoted White House propaganda claiming 365 “wins” in the first year of Trump’s second term and instructing people on how to pray for ICE agents and “leftist cities.” The latter urges people to pray that “any machinations for a welfare state agenda be blocked” and includes this far-reaching statement: “It’s important that our prayers should be for the removal of the system in place, not for the preservation of it. We should pray for God’s complete renewal for our societies, and for the complete removal of all the infrastructures that are averse to God’s design.”
The White House Prayer Team, which functions as a distribution channel for IFA and the White House Faith Office, distributes IFA’s prayer guides and repackages White House press releases with add-ons like “Thank God for the Great Healthcare Plan, and pray it will bless and help the American people.” Earlier this month the Prayer Team promoted White House attacks on Democratic officials they claimed have “deliberately stoked hatred and division against ICE officers and urged, “Pray for our ICE officers as they face attacks from criminals and elected officials alike.”
Another influential pro-Trump network is the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, led by Latino evangelical leader and ardent Trump booster Samuel Rodriguez. Rodriguez, associated with the dominionist New Apostolic Reformation movement, has long portrayed himself as nonpartisan, but in recent years he declared the Democratic Party to be anti-Christian. Last year, Rodriguez again urged Hispanic evangelicals to vote for Trump despite MAGA's anti-immigrant rhetoric. Rodriguez promised skeptics that Trump’s anti-immigration efforts would focus on “mucho malo hombres,” saying, “the idea that they’re going to come after families that have been here for 25 years…That’s not going to happen.”
In November 2024, Rodriguez said on PBS NewsHour, “I would be the first one vociferously protesting” if the administration came after long-settled “God-fearing, hard-working” immigrant families. When NewsHour host Geoff Bennett asked Rodriguez about that promise in June 2025 as ICE conducted violent sweeps in Los Angeles, Rodriguez said he had expressed his “consternation” with members of the administration. But he continued to defend Trump, implying that DHS was acting on its own and not following the president’s orders.
This Monday, NHCLC and Rodriguez hosted an “urgent call” for pastors and leaders to join him and Rep. Elvira Salazar for “prayer and dialogue” about “the current immigration situation in Minnesota and its impact on faith communities across the nation.” Christianity Today has reported on the sense of powerlessness and betrayal among Hispanic evangelical pastors in Minneapolis over the way their community members have been targeted by federal agents.
According to the Christian Post, a Minneapolis pastor on the NHCLC call said ICE raids were “traumatizing” and that he and other pastors were on the verge of losing their buildings because fear of federal agents has driven church attendance down by 80 percent. Rep. Salazar reportedly criticized the 3000-per-day deportation quota that is driving ICE tactics, saying that many Hispanic Trump voters “feel that they were deceived.” (Salazar and Rodriguez support legislation that would allow some long-time undocumented immigrants to stay in the U.S. without a path to citizenship.)
But Rodriguez apparently allowed National Faith Advisory Board member and close Paula White associate Todd Lamphere to act as an advocate for Trump and promoter of the White House narrative on the call. Lamphere reportedly prayed that God would “squelch” the “voice of the agitators” and claimed falsely that most of the protesters in Minneapolis are not locals but paid “professional agitators” bused in from somewhere else. Lamphere assured the pastors that Trump is “a man of empathy” who “loves the Hispanic community” and just wants to get the “bad element” out. That is clearly not what is happening, and not what the pastors on the call have been experiencing in their communities.
Rodriguez has been vocal in his praise for Trump ordering the abduction of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro and his denunciation of anti-ICE activists disrupting a church service. He has previously criticized DHS quotas for leading to the deportation of people who are not criminals, but he does not seem to have had much to say publicly about ICE actions harming Latino churches in Minneapolis or killing protesters.
