MAGA religious-right leaders are rallying around two of the arguably most corrupt people in American public life: Attorney General nominee Todd Blanche and Texas Attorney General and U.S. Senate candidate Ken Paxton.
Todd Blanche used to be President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer. Now he provides the president with essentially the same service at taxpayer expense. Blanche is “everything an attorney general should not be,” as People For the American Way President Svante Myrick said yesterday when Trump announced Blanche’s nomination.
As deputy to former Attorney General Pam Bondi, Blanche oversaw the corruption of the Justice Department being turned into a weapon of revenge against Trump’s enemies. He signed off on a deal to exempt Trump, his family, and their business networks immunity from any federal investigation or prosecution for any and all previous wrongdoing. He defended the creation of a massive slush fund for Trump to dole out in secret to his political supporters, including those who violently attacked the Capitol.
In addition, Blanche has been, in the words of conservative writer William Kristol, “the prime orchestrator and key executor of the Trump administration’s Jeffrey Epstein coverup.”
Blanche has been acting attorney general since Bondi was pushed out of the job. On Monday, after Trump officially nominated Blanche to the position, the pro-Trump prayer warriors at Intercessors for America jumped into action. IFA, which serves as an unofficial public relations arm of the White House, pushed out a prayer thanking God “for bold and true warriors like Todd Blanche” and urged people to pray for his confirmation by the Senate.
“God bless this man for his faithful and diligent work in defending President Trump,” gushed IFA, asking its members to pray for “angelic protection” for Blanche and to pray “that the lies that the corrupt media spews are debunked and the truth reigns supreme with justice being served.”
Also on IFA’s prayer list:
- Pray that any nefarious actors and deceivers are exposed, prosecuted as necessary, and dismissed.
- Pray for an iron dome hedge of protection around the Trump administration and the DOJ.
- Pray for holy boldness, courage, perseverance, tenacity, and steadfastness to multiply in Blanche and the DOJ.
IFA also devoted a good chunk of a Tuesday prayer call to intercessory prayer on Blanche’s behalf. IFA Field Leader Lisa Townsend compared Blanche to the biblical leader David, “bold as a lion” and “not afraid to go against the Goliaths.” She prayed that Blanche would have a “double anointing to take out the spiritual forces” that are behind his critics’ “lies.” Rich Swingle, a New York-based activist, prayed that Blanche would be quickly confirmed and “bring justice to those who are working evil in our society.”
Now let’s talk about Ralph Reed, the Republican political operative who helped Pat Robertson build the Christian Coalition into a political machine in the 1990s and who now runs a religious-right political and voter turnout operation called the Faith and Freedom Coalition.
During his Christian Coalition era, Reed talked about the need for “leaders of character” who “can set a moral example for our children.” He and other religious-right leaders abandoned that principle when they rallied around the amoral Trump who had promised them power and the Supreme Court of their dreams.
In a recent interview with religious-right activist and author Tim Clinton, Reed vowed that Faith and Freedom Coalition activists would be “knocking on a minimum of a million doors” to try to elect the notoriously corrupt Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton to the U.S. Senate.
Paxton has been embroiled in scandals for years. He is so corrupt that he was impeached by the Republican-dominated legislature, though the state senate declined to convict him. During Paxton’s runoff with Sen. John Cornyn this year, former Republican Rep. Louie Gohmert called Paxton “the most corrupt attorney general we’ve had in my lifetime.”
And in a truly remarkable development Dan Cogdell, a lawyer who represented Paxton while he was facing securities fraud charges and impeachment, just endorsed Paxton’s Democratic opponent, state legislator and Christian seminarian James Talarico.
As Right Wing Watch has reported, religious-right figures have reacted to Talarico’s popularity by attacking his faith. In his interview with Clinton, Reed stuck to the script, saying that Talarico’s campaign is an example of the left covering an “anti-family, anti-marriage, anti-life, anti-Israel” agenda in “a thin veneer of religiosity.”
Also waving away Paxton’s corruption is MAGA activist and dominionist Lance Wallnau, who recently claimed that Paxton has “learned from his wicked ways” and that Christians have to vote for him because “he’s a fighter,” saying, “That’s just the way it is.”