The Media Are Ignoring Trump Nominees’ Christian Nationalism
Mainstream journalism is doing nothing to flag dangerously theocratic ideologies
In the uproar over Donald Trump’s presidential appointments, the single most disturbing pattern is getting virtually ignored by corporate media.
In just the past 24 hours, mainstream coverage of two new nominees hasn’t even mentioned their extensive theocratic goals and backgrounds.
Politico did an entire article on Russ Vought’s Christian nationalism earlier this year. But since Trump announced he wants Vought to run the White House budget office again, Google searches don’t show a single corporate news outlet even referring to Vought’s self-professed theocratic crusade.
A similar, though lower-profile, background for Housing and Urban Development nominee Scott Turner also isn’t mentioned in any of the big, mainstream reporting on him.
But there are plenty of red flags about both.
Vought’s Christian nationalism was well covered, when he was a key player in Project 2025, with plans to inject Christian theocracy into a second Trump term. And while Project 2025 has certainly been mentioned in connection with Vought’s new nomination, its theocratic elements have gone ignored.
Here’s Politico from its article on Christian nationalist ambitions in a second Trump term, citing two unnamed sources:
...Vought hopes his proximity and regular contact with the former president — he and Trump speak at least once a month, according to one of the people — will elevate Christian nationalism as a focal point in a second Trump term.
Turner, who served in the first Trump White House, is receiving even less attention. But HUD has many intersections with religious issues.
In 2020, for instance, under then-Secretary Dr. Ben Carson, HUD proposed rules to benefit religious organizations receiving federal funds — and using them to proselytize.
Under one rule, if a federally funded religious charity proselytized to the people it was serving with taxpayer dollars, it would no longer have to offer alternative service-providers who wouldn’t, for example, put Jesus on the plate with their free food. Also, religious groups getting taxpayer funding would be allowed to discriminate on religious grounds when hiring people.
Carson also used HUD to provide employment to his Christian fellow travelers. His senior counsel was Amman Simon, a veteran of right-wing groups and past aide to then-Rep. Randy Hultgren (R-IL), an insider at the Fellowship Foundation, which uses the National Prayer Breakfast to build right-wing, theocratic networks.
Turner is both associate pastor at the Prestonwood Baptist Church and a board member of Carson’s American Cornerstone Institute. The two institutions are mentioned only in passing in mainstream coverage, but both are animated by right-wing theological politics.
Coverage of Turner’s nomination refers to his title of “associate pastor” in anodyne fashion, with no context. But there’s plenty to be found.
Turner’s boss at Prestonwood is Pastor Jack Graham, a religious advisor to Trump, and opponent of LGBTQ+ and reproductive rights.
Graham’s opposition to jailing abortion patients made him not sufficiently opposed to reproductive rights for some. But he was also one of 16 former Southern Baptist Convention presidents who issued a joint statement opposing same-sex marriage.
(Project 2025 proposed prioritizing HUD housing vouchers for “two-parent households.”)
Graham is deeply entwined with the Trump universe’s theocratic circles, introducing Rapture-believing Secretary of State Mike Pompeo at one event and leading the National Day of Prayer one year.
And earlier this year, Graham and Turner launched Prestonwood’s Perilous Fight Faith tour to inject religiosity into public life. Carson came along for the ride, writing,
It was certainly an awe-inspiring start to American Cornerstone’s The Perilous Fight Faith Tour this morning with Dr. Jack Graham, Pastor Scott Turner, and the congregation... With government-sanctioned attacks on faith communities across the nation rampant, it is now more critical than ever for America’s faithful to be courageous and stand up for the key foundation of our republic: The Family.
Turner responded: “Thank you for bringing such an important and challenging message to the people today! 🙏🏾”
And Turner has other ties to theocratic organizations. There’s the America First Policy Institute, which sets its founding principles — and America’s — on a Biblical basis. The Associated Press notes dryly only that Turner is “chair of the center for education opportunity at America First Policy Institute, a think tank set up by former Trump administration staffers.” No mention of its false theocratic claims.
Then there’s Carson’s American Cornerstone Institute (ACI), where Turner’s a board member. Upon its launch in 2021, Carson described it as dedicated to election integrity. Three years later ACI apparently has a different mission: Christianizing education. From the website:
Our schools are failing [students] by not instilling an appreciation for our country's history or respecting the vital Judeo-Christian values upon which the United States was founded.
For some reason, the ostensibly nonpartisan nonprofit waited until February 2024 to flag this, but according to the ACI, “Since the moment he took office, Joe Biden and his administration have engaged in a full-fledged campaign to weaponize the federal government against their political opponents and people of faith.”
One complaint: Biden administration rules requiring that LGBTQ+ foster children be placed in homes where they have access to care providers appropriate for their gender and sexual identities.
Not surprisingly, Carson and Turner’s ACI was funded by big right-wing guns right out of the gate. The Conservative Partnership Institute gave $160,950. The Ed Uihlein Family Foundation gave $1.5 million and then another $1 million to ACI
How did Carson and Turner attract such largesse? Carson has been a theocratic cause célèbre since the Fellowship Foundation made Carson their keynote speaker at the National Prayer Breakfast (NPB).
Carson used the nonpartisan, unifying event to rip Pres. Barack Obama a new one over abortion.
But perhaps an even bigger potential rainmaker is one of the ACI’s founding board members. Former Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) is not only the president of the Heritage Foundation — home of Project 2025 — he’s also a longtime insider at The Fellowship.
And Carson has more history The Fellowship. MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, for instance, cited his meeting with Carson at the NPB as a turning point on his road to Jesus and Trump.
A participant in that meeting told me several years ago that, “After the prayer breakfast, the NPB leadership asked me to bring Dr. Ben Carson to a small room for follow-up prayer with a small group of perhaps 15 individuals, including Mike Lindell.”
One Fellowship leader who was there, A. Larry Ross, even served as spokesperson for Carson’s presidential campaign. And it was Carson who connected Lindell with Trump.
Turner and Vought are hardly the only Trump picks with right-wing, theocratic ties going unreported by a mainstream, corporate media ill-equipped to grapple with religious issues.
I’ve reported on other nominees whose similar backgrounds are utterly invisible in coverage of their appointments. Trump’s chosen Secretary of State Marco Rubio is perhaps the most significant.
But the ranks of lower-profile appointees are also being filled with these people, with not even a mention. Even with my own interest in the issue, I’m probably missing most of them.
But just this week, to give an example that I did catch, I reported on future NATO Ambassador Matt Whitaker. That story prompted Jeff Sharlet, creator of the definitive journalistic works on The Fellowship, aka The Family, to issue a warning:
Friends, it’s not time to tune out. The structures are being put in place. Pay attention to the underticket.
There are no doubt other affiliations and past statements of both Turner and Vought, not included here, that should disqualify any government official sworn to defend the Constitution. But at the moment, Americans have no idea about even the general pattern.
That’s in part because Democrats aren’t raising these issues, despite Christian nationalism fueling the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on their workplace and the Constitution. Many are still wary of the politics, but their silence and the media’s produce a self-sustaining cone of silence.
Journalists aren’t addressing these issues because Democrats aren’t making them an issues. So the news reports elide any mention of these connections, or, worse, describe them in benign, unremarkable terms.
In fact, however, these nominees have been cultivated by profoundly un-American institutions propped up by theocratic billionaires to supplant secular democracy with Christian autocracy.
But Americans relying on corporate news outlets can’t see it happening.
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Yes, we are sleepwalking toward an authoritarian "Christian" theocratic, kleptocratic state and The Fucking News is doing better reporting on it than the legacy media. Nicely researched and reported.
Corporate media understands Christian theology, history, or denominations just about as well as they understand science. Neither topic is something you can cover in tiny sound bites in between ads. And when it comes to religion in the general sense, they're even more clueless. Frank Zappa has a mroe accurate take on the issue, and how many decades ago was that? I appreciate TFN for covering this.