Pennsylvania state Sen. Doug Mastriano, a Christian nationalist and conspiracy theorist who ran unsuccessful campaigns for Congress in 2018 and Governor in 2022, has been nominated by President Donald Trump to serve as U.S. Ambassador to Slovakia. Mastriano appeared with several other nominees before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Thursday, where, faced with skeptical questions from Democratic senators, he lied about his record.
Mastriano’s revisionism was at its most extreme when responding to Sen. Tim Kaine’s questions about his involvement in Trump’s efforts to stay in power after losing the 2020 election. Kaine pointed out that Mastriano had been at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, to try to stop certification of the election. Mastriano said he had only come to Washington to hear the president speak.
When Kaine pressed him on promoting conspiracy theories about the 2020 election and urging Congress to overturn the election results, Mastriano repeatedly said some version of “All I did was hold a committee hearing.”
That is far from the truth.
Mastriano did indeed organize a hearing near Gettysburg that gave a platform to Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani to make wild claims about the election; Trump himself called in to say that the election was “rigged,” that he had won the state “by a lot,” and that he should be declared the victor. Mastriano ended the hearing with a call to arms: “The time for dithering and deliberation is over. It’s time for decisive action.” Mastriano attended a secretive White House meeting after the hearing.
Here is some of what Mastriano did in addition to that hearing:
- Two days after the 2020 election, he called on the secretary of the commonwealth to resign.
- On a prayer call organized to try to keep Trump in power, Mastriano denounced “weak and feckless” Republican officials for not doing more to help Trump and prayed that “we’ll seize the power that we had given to us by the Constitution and by you providentially.”
- Shortly after the election, Mastriano told QAnon activists that he hoped God would intervene in efforts to overturn the election results in Pennsylvania, claiming that the state’s elections were less secure than those in Afghanistan.
- On Nov. 28, 2020 he tweeted that he was pushing to have the legislature appoint pro-Trump electors. From WHYY: “Days after President Joe Biden’s victory was certified in Pennsylvania, Mastriano sponsored a resolution in the Legislature to undo the certification, declare the election in dispute and effectively overturn state law by empowering the Republican-controlled Legislature to pick electors. The resolution did not gather any cosponsors and died in committee without action on Nov. 30.”
But wait, there’s more:
- In late November, Trump called in while Mastriano was appearing on the radio show of MAGA activist Eric Metaxas and praised Mastriano’s efforts to keep Trump in power. Mastriano had just called for an emergency session of the state legislature to “vote on taking back our power to select our electors for the presidential election.”
- Mastriano spoke at the Dec. 12 Jericho March rally at which Oath Keepers’ Stewart Rhodes threatened a bloody civil war if Trump did not remain in power. Mastriano told the crowd that things had looked pretty bad in America in 1776, but God had intervened and handed George Washington victory. “This is our day,” he told rallygoers. “This is our hour. Let’s stand together. We don’t hang together, we’ll hang separately.”
- Mastriano asked God to bless letters he said Trump had asked him to send then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy “outlining the fraud in Pennsylvania” and prayed that his letters would “embolden them to stand firm and disregard what has happened in Pennsylvania until we have an investigation.”
- On another prayer call Mastriano prayed for victory against “the lies and deceit, the cowardice, the dithering.”
Two days before the attack on the Capitol, Mastriano appeared on “The Eric Metaxas Show,” where he said:
But at this point here, we're gonna see what's going to happen on the sixth of January in Washington, D.C., with our, you know, our U.S. senators and congressmen and congresswomen, you know, disputing at least six states as they rightly should. But where are we? Where do we stand as a nation? We're calling out to God for divine intervention. I feel like my back is up against the Red Sea right now. We're waiting for something to happen, some revelation to come forth that will part the waters and let truth to come forth.
Sen. Kaine’s response: “You can’t erase your record now.”
Kaine said it’s his experience that people who are attracted to conspiracy theories rarely embrace just one. Mastriano denied being involved in conspiracy theories, but again, his record is clear. He participated in “ReAwaken America,” a traveling carnival of conspiracy theories, MAGA politics, and Christian nationalism. While campaigning for governor in 2022, he appeared at a conspiracy-laden QAnon conference, where he was awarded a “Sword of David” by QAnon conspiracy theorists Alan and Francine Fosdick. At that conference, Mastriano told the crowd he would be elected governor because “my God will make it so.” He introduced legislation to ban “chemtrails” that are the subject of many right-wing conspiracy theories.
Mastriano did the now-familiar Trump-nominee sidestep when asked who had won the 2020 election; he repeatedly refused to give a simple answer, saying instead that Joe Biden had been certified as the winner.
Sen. Jacky Rosen asked questions related to Mastriano’s Christian nationalism, which was widely covered during his campaign for governor. Sen. Rosen said she wanted to talk about religious pluralism. Referring to Mastriano’s Christian nation rhetoric and claim that separation of church and state is a myth, she asked if he believes the country’s political leaders should all be Christian.
Mastriano avoided giving a direct answer to that question, while professing his commitment to religious pluralism and religious liberty for everyone. Rosen noted the Mastriano campaign’s connections to the notoriously antisemitic Andrew Torba and Gab; Mastriano said he had severed those relationships once Torba’s antisemitism had become apparent.
Mastriano is aligned with dominionist Lance Wallnau and other New Apostolic Reformation figures, including musician and MAGA activist Sean Feucht. Mastriano has promoted and campaigned with conspiracy theorists like “prophet” Julie Green.
Sen. Jeanne Shaheen questioned Mastriano about remarks he made on a 2018 radio interview calling European Union leaders the “political, diplomatic enemies of the United States of America.” Mastriano said the dynamic was more hostile back then and that he has deep connections to European leaders today.
Shaheen also questioned comments he had made to staff about the EU being a “rising rival, comparable to China” that would eventually create a standing army to challenge the United States. “My view is we do work better together,” he said, saying that he served alongside NATO troops and he does not want to see NATO fade away or be overshadowed by an EU army.
“I haven’t heard anybody at NATO suggesting that that’s gonna happen,” said Shaheen. “I think you’re absolutely right—we do work better when we work together and cooperate, and I would think somebody who served on the battlefield with those countries would know better than to make those kinds of statements. And I can tell you, as a diplomat representing the United States of America, you should absolutely know better.”
