The Left’s Demonization of ‘Christian Nationalism’ Likely Inspired Trump Assassination Attempt, Meg Basham Says
The Left’s demonization of conservative Christians in politics as “Christian nationalism” likely contributed to the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump Saturday, a Daily Wire reporter and author says.
Megan Basham, culture reporter at The Daily Wire and author of “Shepherds for Sale: How Evangelical Leaders Traded the Truth for a Leftist Agenda,” noted that the Left has long demonized conservative Christians in politics in ways that may inspire violence against them.
“Christians, over a period of 50 years, making use of the same legislative process, the same electoral process, the same judicial process that their secular Left neighbors do—they have suggested that that is something threatening and violent,” Basham told The Daily Signal at the Republican National Convention Tuesday.
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“I think that it is impossible not to look at that rhetoric and look at what happened Saturday and start to make connections about how dangerous it is to suggest that people who have religious convictions—and that very naturally develops into a policy view—that that is somehow dangerous,” she said. “Well, I would say it’s actually dangerous to peddle that view.”
She noted that “the day before President Trump was shot,” The Washington Post published “not an op-ed but supposedly a piece of reporting on the danger of the violent rhetoric of Christian nationalism.”
Basham faulted the report for relying on “vibes,” saying that it “didn’t have specific quotes or specific allegations” but rather suggested that “the fact that Christians want to take part in our electoral process is somehow dangerous.”
“It’s sheer bigotry against Christians,” she said.
Basham spoke three days after Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, opened fire at a Trump rally, wounding the former president and fatally shooting Corey Comperatore, a 50-year-old former local fire chief who reportedly dove on family members to protect them.
Basham’s book, “Shepherds for Sale,” reveals how secular Left foundations fund Christian churches and ministries, pushing them in a “woke” direction on matters of race, LGBTQ+ issues, COVID-19, and other causes.
She told The Daily Signal that she was shocked to see “racial rhetoric” from churches and ministries in 2019 and 2020 and she started thinking, “Wow, this doesn’t feel biblical.”
“Those little alarm bells started sounding really loud when we got into COVID,” Basham recalled. She lamented that some pastors pushed “a personal health decision” like the COVID-19 vaccines with the message, “You must get vaccinated in order to follow Jesus.”
“The left-wing infiltration—very deliberate infiltration in the form of secular foundations funded by people like George Soros, Bill Gates, the Clinton Foundation—they were deliberately infiltrating churches and ministries, creating evangelical front groups, to move evangelicals on any number of policy prescriptions,” she added.
Basham recalled seeing “National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins, otherwise known as Anthony Fauci’s boss, partnering with these ministries intentionally to say, How do we get the Christians to fall in line with these authoritarian policies?”
