According to a new report from Vanity Fair, on Sunday, former VP Mike Pence — ahead of his likely run for president — is meeting with an evangelical pastor who “has made sexist, antisemitic, [and] Islamophobic” remarks and claimed Hurricane Katrina was “‘the judgment of God against the city of New Orleans’ and gay pride parades.”
Pence is looking to lock down support from evangelical leaders as he prepares to take on Donald Trump, even going so far as to court extremists who believe “women are only meant to be mothers and bear children.”
Vanity Fair: DONALD TRUMP’S FISSURE WITH EVANGELICALS OPENS THE DOOR FOR MIKE PENCE
By Caleb Ecarma | January 20, 2022
Key Points:
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“Mike Pence has yet to publicly declare a 2024 presidential run, but that hasn’t stopped the former veep, a self-described Christian, from quietly courting evangelical leaders who could put him in the crosshairs of public scrutiny.”
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“Pence is scheduled to appear Sunday at San Antonio’s Cornerstone Church for a fireside chat with John Hagee, the church’s founding pastor who has made sexist, antisemitic, Islamophobic, and otherwise offensive remarks—including a 2015 sermon reportedly declaring that ‘women are only meant to be mothers and bear children’ and an infamous 2006 interview in which he hailed Hurricane Katrina as ‘the judgment of God against the city of New Orleans’ and gay pride parades.”
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“Hagee is not the only prominent evangelical leader Pence will have met with this month: Last weekend, he appeared at First Baptist Dallas, an influential megachurch led by Robert Jeffress, who was a member of Donald Trump’s Evangelical Advisory Board. Jeffress’s problematic record of comments is also noteworthy: The pastor has, for instance, called homosexuality ‘filthy.’”
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“Pence’s church drop-ins come amid a growing rift between Trump and evangelical leaders who supported him in 2016 and 2020 but now want a fresh face, as I wrote last month. The former president this week accused evangelicals of ‘disloyalty,’ arguing that he accomplished enough in his first term to earn their support next year. ‘Nobody has ever done more for right to life than Donald Trump,’ he told the Christian Broadcasting Network’s David Brody. Meanwhile, Pence, whose new, shadow candidacy memoir is titled So Help Me God, can sell himself as a born-again, ideologically driven evangelical—a brand he’s been cultivating for decades that stands in sharp contrast to Trump’s more political relationship with leaders on the religious right.”
Read the full report here.
Published: Jan 20, 2023