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Faith and Freedom Coalition conference continues. Eric Metaxas says that members of the GOP who have not defended the Jan. 6 insurrectionists are “dead” to him.

John Fea   |  June 19, 2021

Yesterday we kept you up to speed on the 2021 Road to Majority conference sponsored by Ralph Reed’s Faith and Freedom Coalition. If you want to get a feel for how Trump’s evangelical supporters are handling his loss and the Biden presidency, this is a good place to start. Ted Cruz preached Dominionism and compared critical race theory to the KKK. The crowd heckled Mike Pence. Check out our posts here and here.

What is happening today, Saturday?:

Good morning from #RTM2021 and the land of faith & freedom! https://t.co/i2s9KuAZvc

— Maureen Blum ❤️?? (@moblum) June 19, 2021

Trump court evangelical Mark Burns is still around:

Thank you @PastorMarkBurns, Founder & CEO of The NOW Television Network, for joining us at #RTM2021! pic.twitter.com/7hWAGJAekz

— Faith & Freedom (@FaithandFreedom) June 19, 2021

I don’t understand this tweet. Isn’t “loyalty to God” in politics an “interest”:

America needs more fathers and mothers with convictions loyal to God and not to their interests. #America #RTM2021

— Javier Yunes (@javieryunes) June 19, 2021

Congressman Barry Loudermilk had some things to say. Wouldn’t a Christian be at least somewhat concerned if what he says offends others?

? @RepLoudermilk “Freedom comes at a cost; Your #freedom of being offended doesn’t trump my freedom of speech nor my freedom of religion” #RTM2021 @FaithandFreedom @GaFedRW @JasonShepherd @GaRepublicans @GaPublicPolicy #GeorgiaOnMyMind pic.twitter.com/AGpfTeNzvI

— Maureen Blum ❤️?? (@moblum) June 19, 2021

Dinesh D’Souza was there. I think he needs to read Matthew Karp’s recent Harper’s essay. Here is what Karp says about D’Souza:

Thus the leading “historian” of the Trump era is the pundit Dinesh D’Souza, who, unlike earlier generations of conservatives, makes no effort to defend or even contextualize slavery, the Confederacy, or Jim Crow. States’ rights play little part in his historical narrative. On the contrary, the central argument of D’Souza’s best-selling books and movies is simply that all these racist evils were perpetuated by “radical” Democrats—men such as Calhoun, Davis, and the Mississippi segregationist James Eastland. Only “conservative” Republicans, from Lincoln to Trump, have faithfully defended American freedom and civil rights.

Left-leaning historians, myself included, have sometimes been tempted to debate this argument, whose particular claims are easily reduced to rubble. But this is a fool’s errand, since D’Souza’s shtick is immune to facts and logic, and frankly indifferent to ideological consistency. You could even say that the D’Souza thesis, widely reproduced in the right-wing media, takes progressive history literally but not seriously. (“Did you know that the Democratic Party defended slavery, started the Civil War, founded the KKK, and fought against every major civil-rights act in U.S. history?” asks one YouTube video produced by the conservative media company PragerU.) This sort of trolling offers no ideological counterblast to the progressive narrative that puts slavery and racial oppression at the center of the American experience. In fact, it essentially ratifies a version of that narrative, claiming the mantle of its heroes, such as Frederick Douglass, and declaring that its villains were the forerunners of Nancy Pelosi and Joe Biden.

And here you go:

"The one thing that has kept the African American community down… is the democratic party," says @DineshDSouza at #RTM2021

— Mya Guarnieri Jaradat (@myaguarnieri) June 19, 2021

.@DineshDSouza is talking now about histories of Democratic and Republican parties, remarking that Democrats owned more slaves than Republicans did and that a majority of Democrats opposed the 13th amendment. This is exactly what Black attendees have told me, too. #RTM2021

— Mya Guarnieri Jaradat (@myaguarnieri) June 19, 2021

D'Souza has been on this "Democrats won't admit their racist history" thing for a while, but I read this NYT package called "the 1619 Project" – maybe you've heard of it – and this was covered. pic.twitter.com/DFSDKKaWKx

— Dave Weigel (@daveweigel) June 19, 2021

D’Souza defends the January 6 insurrectionists:

"The people who are really getting shafted right now are the January 6 protesters," says @DineshDSouza , "The left is lying, 'Oh, they were planning to overthrow the US.'
No they were fighting to get an honest count of the vote. Stop lying to us." #RTM2021

— Mya Guarnieri Jaradat (@myaguarnieri) June 19, 2021

D'Souza says the protesters were "trying to get an honest count of an election," not overthrow the an elected government, and contrasts how Rs talk about Jan. 6 activists vs how the left is "building monuments to George Floyd."

— Dave Weigel (@daveweigel) June 19, 2021

Former Trump lawyer and Liberty University Falkirk Center fellow Jenna Ellis is fighting for truth. Let’s remember that she has built her career in the Trump subculture by working with Rudy Giuliani to get the 2020 presidential election overturned. This is her “truth.” I am reminded of Jeremy Sabella’s Current piece on how the Christian Right is now the party of postmodernism.

.@JennaEllisEsq is urging media to "be bold" in our pursuit of the truth and not be cowed by possible judgment from higher ups. IMHO, this holds true for right and left alike. #RTM2021

— Mya Guarnieri Jaradat (@myaguarnieri) June 19, 2021

And let’s not forget Eric Metaxas:

Metaxas plays to the anti-Pence crowd:

"Because I love him, I want him to know that he needs to deal with that," Metaxas says. Yesterday, Pence got heckled by a few people as a "traitor," and hasn't otherwise been mentioned much here.

— Dave Weigel (@daveweigel) June 19, 2021

Metaxas says that he heard Ted Cruz called the Jan. 6 rioters "terrorists." (He has.) "If he did, he needs to repent of that publicly, because I cannot play with anybody who is going to play that game."

— Dave Weigel (@daveweigel) June 19, 2021

There is a reason why there are only a “handful” of “leaders”:

Reed, who does not share Metaxas's certainty that 2020 was stolen, now sitting with Metaxas for a couple onstage questions, trying to nudge him to other topics. Metaxas calls Biden "the fake president of the United States" and that "January 6 people are being persecuted."

— Dave Weigel (@daveweigel) June 19, 2021

"Any Republican that has not spoken in defense of the January 6 people – to me, they're dead," Metaxas says. "Show us that you represent us."

— Dave Weigel (@daveweigel) June 19, 2021

When the insurrection happened on January 6, Metaxas insisted these were not Trump supporters. On January 6, 2021 he tweeted, “There is no doubt Antifa infiltrated the protesters today and planned this.” Now he has no problem calling them Trump followers who deserve GOP support.

Filed Under: Way of Improvement Tagged With: Christian Right, Dinesh D'Souza, Eric Metaxas, evangelicals and politics, Faith and Freedom, Jenna Ellis, Mark Burns, Ralph Reed

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