“The Left is loaded with demons”
One of the ways the Trump campaign is attempting to recruit more Hispanic and Black voters is to work closely with their most fanatical cult members, the evangelical Christian church. They had mostly only been able to indoctrinate their white membership but they see some untilled soil in those minority evangelical communities and they’re going after them with a two pronged effort between the Church and the Trump campaign:
Just as they prophesied Trump’s victory and collaborated in the 2020 attempted coup, the Trump wing of the New Apostolic Reformation is on the offensive once again, waging a campaign in counties they think will swing the 2024 presidential election.
The campaign has two main elements. One is led by Apostle Lance Wallnau, whose campaign is branded as The Courage Tour, while the other is led by a Trumpian think tank, the America First Policy Institute and its political action arm, America Policy Works. The latter’s project has disappeared from public view and may have gone stealth, but Wallnau’s Courage Tour, which appears to be a rejiggered version of last year’s Fire and Glory Tour, remains quite conspicuous.
Wallnau, a strategist and the public face of the revolutionary movement known as the New Apostolic Reformation, is best known for his advocacy of the 7 Mountain Mandate, which is the idea that Christians are called to conquer seven “mountains” of society to achieve religious and political dominion: government, family, religion, arts & entertainment, media, education, and business.
Wallnau says he’s engaged in “the battle for the mountain of government.” To that end, he also says “there are 3,143 counties in the United States and the Lord showed us that 19 are going to determine the future of America.” (Last year he said it was 14. But apparently, the lord’s plans changed.) The Lord’s target counties, he says, are now in seven swing states, where evangelical turnout was proportionally lower.
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Meanwhile, the America First Policy Institute (AFPI), a think tank formed in 2021 to promote the Trump agenda, is targeting 19 counties in 9 states. Launched with $1 million from Trump’s Save America PAC, AFPI boasts the involvement of members of the former president’s cabinet, administration and campaign staff.
AFPI is also partly led and staffed by apostolic figures including Trump’s spiritual advisor, Apostle Paula White-Cain who heads the Center for American Values. (She also leads the Trump campaign’s National Faith Advisory Board, an AFPI partner in targeting the 19 counties.)
Wallnau says seven states are key. AFPI says nine. Apparently, the lists of the fateful 19 counties have diverged as they’ve evolved.
In any case, the criteria are that they’re suburban swing counties with a population of 400,000 or more, and where the margin to win the state is less than 2%.
In Arizona, Maricopa County, which includes the city of Phoenix, is the target. Hayek says “We [meaning the Trump campaign] lost the state of Arizona by 10,000 votes in 2020. Think about it.”
Georgia, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin complete AFPI’s “Tier 1” states, all of which are, again, among Axios’s six highlighted swing states. Florida, Michigan, Ohio, North Carolina comprise “Tier 2.”
Basically, they aren’t even pretending to separate the spiritual and the political anymore. Trump is Jesus.
Wallnau said God told him that the reason some states are electoral battle grounds is because they are “spiritual battle ground states”—where “my people aren’t praying strong in the spirit. And if we don’t have apostles and prophets in the territory, then demons control the territory and the minds of people are under the influence of devils.”
“The Left is loaded with demons,” Wallnau has warned. “I don’t think it’s people anymore; I think you’re dealing with demons talking through people.”
This coalition believes it can brainwash enough non-voting or Democratic evangelicals in these swing counties to vote for Trump/Jesus to win the election. Because, Trump’s opposition (you and me) broadly known as “the Left” are actual demons. Since apparently there are tens of millions of people who believe that QAnon crapola and that Hillary Clinton was running a child sex trafficking ring, it’s pretty clear that there are plenty of Americans who are open to such delusions. They may just be on to something.
I encourage you to read the whole story at Religion Dispatches if you have time. This is the sort of under covered information that’s really important for us to understand as we go into an election that will, once again, be fought in a very select number of swing state counties where Biden barely managed to edge out a win in 2020 and which Hillary Clijnton before him barely lost. It’s the whole ballgame. In our ridiculous democracy, which we are allegedly fighting so hard to protect, these tiny pieces of land in certain closely divided states make the rest of us completely irrelevant.
In the last election Joe Biden won by 7 million votes, which was 51.3% to 46.8%. In a normal system a win like that would be a decisive victory that no one could question. But because of these small numbers in those swing states it actually seems much closer.
The Democrats shouldn’t have to win by 20 million votes in order to be seen as real victors (and I’m not sure that would even do it with Trump around. ) But that’s where we are.