Growing Influence of White Christian Nationalism in the GOP

Background Briefing: July 25, 2022

Should Crime Reporters Replace Political Reporters in Covering Trump?

We begin with the failure of the mainstream press to acknowledge the real evidence before them presented by the January 6 Committee as they continue to report on Trump and his cohorts as legitimate actors in a political drama instead of criminal outliers out to murder opponents and kill American democracy. Joining us is James Risen, the Senior National Security Correspondent at The Intercept and a former investigative journalist with the New York Times, and author of the New York Times bestsellers State of War and Pay Any Price: Greed, Power, and Endless War. He won a Pulitzer Prize for his stories about warrantless wiretapping by the NSA and is currently the director of the Press Freedom Defense Fund, which has provided financial assistance for Maria Ressa’s legal defense in the Philippines. We discuss his latest article at The Intercept, “The Cult of Donald Trump: On January 6, Trump was not much different from Jim Jones, as he urged his rabid followers to kill American democracy.”

The Growing Influence of White Christian Nationalism in the GOP

Then, following the Turning Point USA Student Action Summit this weekend in Tampa, Florida at which Trump’s favorite congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene said “We need to be the party of nationalism… I’m a Christian, and I say it proudly—we should be Christian nationalists,” we look into the growing influence of white Christian nationalism in the Republican party. Joining is Kristin Kobes Du Mez, a professor of history at Calvin University and the author of A New Gospel for Women. She has written for the Washington Post, Christianity Today, Christian Century, and Religion & Politics, among other publications, and her latest book is Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation.