Back in 2007, when Rudy Giuliani was a front-runner for the GOP nomination for President of the United States, evangelicals tried to stop him.
Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission said that he could not support a man who was on his third marriage and was pro-choice on abortion. James Dobson of Focus on the Family said that he would not vote in the 2008 presidential election if Giuliani was the nominee. When Pat Robertson endorsed Giuliani, Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council said it was “appalling to see social conservatives embrace Giuliani’s campaign.”
Today, some conservative evangelicals are actually celebrating Giuliani and inviting him to speak at their events. Why? Because he helped Donald Trump in his attempt to undermine the 2020 presidential election. Giuliani is now a speaker on the ReAwaken America Tour, a MAGA evangelical traveling show trying to reclaim America for Christ and rally support for Donald Trump’s presidential run.
The ReAwaken America Tour recently made a stop at Grace Christian Church in Sterling Heights, MI. Stephanie Mencimer of Mother Jones covered the event. Here is a taste:
Rudy Giuliani has been having a rough go of things. Since trying to help former President Donald Trump overturn the 2020 election results, “America’s Mayor” has been indicted in Arizona and Georgia, New York suspended his license to practice law, and he’s facing disbarment in Washington, DC. In December, a jury hit him with a $148 million verdict in a defamation suit filed by two Georgia election workers who Giuliani had falsely accused of fraud. His former lawyer has been suing him for more than $1 million in unpaid legal fees. Even his ex-wife has said he owes her money. As a result, shortly after the verdict in Georgia, the former New York City mayor filed for bankruptcy.
Facing such financial and professional ruin, Giulani has taken a well-trodden path to redemption: turning to far-right Christians for aid. Last Friday night, “America’s Mayor” joined an all-star lineup of self-proclaimed prophets, MAGA luminaries, and other election deniers on a stop of the ReAwaken America tour. Several thousand true believers had convened at Grace Christian Church outside of Detroit for two days of nonstop conspiracy theories, extreme political rhetoric, and a few baptisms in the parking lot.
There, Giuliani offered up the requisite red meat in exchange for the opportunity to beg for money from the assembled faithful. In an expletive-laden speech from the pulpit, he complained about going bankrupt, bashed a judge on one of his cases, and called the Fulton County, Georgia, District Attorney Fani Willis a “ho,” eliciting cheers and laughter from the Christian crowd. “I’m not calling her ‘FAAAHni,’” he said, mocking the pronunciation of her name. “I could drop the ‘ho’ part if she’d just quit and go away, but to me, if you spell your name F-A-N-I, your name is Fanny.” Willis is currently prosecuting Giuliani for allegedly helping Trump try to overturn the 2020 election results.
Watch as the evangelical crowd cheers Giuliani:
More from Mencimer:
The 80-year-old former prosecutor claimed falsely that the New York jury that found Trump guilty of 34 counts of falsifying business records did not issue a unanimous verdict. (It did.) “We’ve become a communist country!” he exclaimed, sounding like Grandpa Simpson. “We’re a dictatorship!” He then pretended to be a demented President Joe Biden, wandering the stage in search of a phantom chair to sit in.
Giuliani is partly responsible for convincing many people in the room that the 2020 election had been stolen from Trump, that voting machines are corrupt, and that Michigan’s election in particular had been riddled with fraud. But last week, he urged the swing-state crowd to get out there and vote in November anyway. “My God, this is the most important election ever!” he said. “You have got to vote early. If it’s too big they can’t rig it.” The crowd gave him a standing ovation.
After Giuliani finished, conference organizer Clay Clark told attendees, and the 1 million viewers he said were watching the livestream, that now was the moment for them to dig deep to help the persecuted Trump ally. On big screens across the sanctuary, he put up the link to Giuliani’s legal defense fund page at the Christian fundraising site GiveSendGo. The page was created by Jackson Lahmeyer, a pastor in Tulsa, Oklahoma, who also was a featured ReAwaken speaker. Lahmeyer seems to share Giuliani’s feelings about Black women. On Saturday afternoon, Lahmeyer tweeted, “Joe + the Hoe needs to be EVICTED from the White House.”
Read the rest here.
The Michigan Advance also covered the rally. I was struck by Anna Liz Nichols’s picture from the event:
