The Biden administration and the FBI are responsible for “politicizing” American citizens, persecuting a former U.S. president and causing Americans to be confused about real truth, a leading conservative evangelical spokesman said Aug. 9 in response to an FBI visit to Donald Trump’s home in Florida the day before.
Speaking with a straight face and no hint of irony, Franklin Graham went on national TV once again to defend Trump, who has been well-documented to be a serial liar and alleged to be guilt of treason.
Graham, president of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and Samaritan’s Purse, was not the only evangelical leader making the FBI visit to Mar-a-Lago a matter of religious persecution. This was a common theme across conservative Christian media Aug. 9.
‘What would Jesus do?’
Doug McKelway, host of the Trinity Broadcasting Network news show “Centerpoint,” asked Graham “What would Jesus do?” in response to the FBI action against Trump, who has defied multiple attempts by the National Archives and federal law enforcement to turn over boxes of government documents he allegedly took from the White House in violation of federal law.
As to what Jesus would do, Graham first referenced Jesus telling his disciples to pay their taxes due to the Roman occupiers in Israel. But he told that story only to draw a contrast with what he believes is a leftist persecution of Trump and all evangelical Christians.
“This is different here. This is our freedom being eroded in this country. And our forefathers gave us the freedom of speech, the freedom to come together to elect our officials and so forth, but this is disappearing so quickly and it’s frightening to see government agents going to a former president’s home and going through his personal files, going into it, breaking into his safe and then taking things that they want.”
And then, ignoring the fact that the National Archives and other government officials have made multiple unsuccessful attempts to get Trump to return what they consider stolen documents, Graham asserted: “If they felt he had something that belonged to the government, they certainly could have asked, and he would have returned it.”
While defending a liar, Graham calls for truth
And yet again, with no reference to Trump’s record of lying and bullying and mocking his opponents, Graham said: “We need to pray because we need God’s help. This nation has become so politicized, we’re so morally corrupt, we need to repent of our sins, and we need to call on God to forgive us of our sins. We need a healing in this nation that only God can bring. We also need a pursuit of the truth.”
Graham also used his TBN platform to warn evangelical Christians that they are likely the next targets of the FBI and the liberals, noting the IRS has asked for 87,000 new agents on its staff.
“I’m afraid if you if you speak out, if there’s any dissent whatsoever against the federal government, they will use the IRS or the Department of Justice or the FBI to investigate you, come to your home.”
“I’m afraid if you if you speak out, if there’s any dissent whatsoever against the federal government, they will use the IRS or the Department of Justice or the FBI to investigate you, come to your home, these kinds of things, to keep you quiet. And so I think that’s where we’re heading. It’s almost like what we saw in the Soviet Union, and this is happening in this country; the socialists in this country are wanting to destroy this country. They want to take away our freedom, and so we need to be concerned.”
Despite his unfavorable comparison of a Democratic White House to Russian socialism, Graham has been an outspoken supporter of Russian President Vladimir Putin and has refused to condemn Putin’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine.
McKelway asked Graham what he thinks of the speculation among some conservatives that the FBI raid was actually about finding and destroying damning evidence against the FBI that was in Trump’s possession.
That was a bridge too far for even Graham, who replied: “I’m not sure I would have believed that. I think there’s conspiracy theorists out there who have a lot of stuff like this, but we just know the left hates Donald Trump, they’re afraid of him.”
Yet, he added, the House Select Committee investigation Trump’s role in the January 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol “is just an attempt to use prime-time television to discredit the former president and to try to keep him from running at all costs. I believe this breaking into his home in Florida is an attempt to keep him from running in the future.”
Graham declared that Democrats are “scared to death” of Trump and have no one comparable to run against him in 2024. “They don’t have a politician in the Democratic Party and neither are there any other Republicans that could have the power and the impact this man has, and so we need to pray for him and pray that God would humble him and that God guides former President Trump’s steps as he as he navigates through all of this.”
White separatist Randy Weaver points to his cabin on a model of his Ruby Ridge, Idaho, property while testifying on Capitol Hill in Washington on Wednesday, Sept. 6, 1995 before a Senate Judiciary subcommittee which was holding hearings on the 1992 raid on his cabin. Subcommittee Chairman Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., left, along with attorney Gary Gilman, right, holding photo of the cabin, and Gerry Spence, second from right, look on. (AP Photo/Dennis Cook)
Comparison to Ruby Ridge
Finally, in arguing his case that Democrats have made the country polarized, Graham compared this week’s FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago to the 1992 federal raid on a compound at Ruby Ridge, Idaho. That 11-day siege was prompted when federal marshals attempted to arrest Randy Weaver on weapons charges. Weaver and his family refused to surrender. Three people, including Weaver’s wife and 14-year-old son and a federal marshal were killed in the raid.
“The Department of Justice seems to be politicized, the FBI seems to be politicized, and I would go back to Ruby Ridge 30 years ago … when Randy Weaver’s wife Vicki was killed, his son was killed, he was shot and a friend of theirs was wounded, and this this was a big black mark on the FBI and Americans lost a lot of trust in the FBI.”
“There are people who don’t want truth; they want the lie to be heard. And I just pray that God will bring the truth forward.”
Given the persecution of people like the Weavers 30 years ago and Trump today, “I just pray that God would get us through this and truth would come out. But unfortunately I think there are people who don’t want truth; they want the lie to be heard. And I just pray that God will bring the truth forward.”
‘A false narrative about a former president’
Likewise, Timothy Head, executive director of the Faith and Freedom Coalition, sounded an alarm Aug. 9 about the implications of the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago: “As the left continues to steer our nation toward chaos, it is becoming increasingly clear that we must all show up to fight for America’s future this November.”
Timothy Head
The Faith and Freedom Coalition describes itself as “a national grassroots movement of over 2 million conservatives and people of faith in support of time-honored values, stronger families and individual freedom.”
Head joined Graham in accusing Democrats — and not Trump and his allies — of not telling the truth.
“The FBI’s raid of President Trump’s private residence at Mar-a-Lago serves as a chilling illustration to all Americans of how low the radical left is willing to stoop to perpetuate a false narrative about a former president of the United States,” he said. “We need to call this what it is — a partisan political attack against a likely 2024 presidential candidate. This is the way of Mao, Stalin and Castro, not Washington, Adams and Lincoln. It is totalitarian and un-American.
“If the left continues to weaponize our justice system and banish its political opponents to dungeons and gulags, the remaining blossoms of freedom and democracy will die on the vine.”
“If the left continues to weaponize our justice system and banish its political opponents to dungeons and gulags, the remaining blossoms of freedom and democracy will die on the vine.”
Other responses
Meanwhile, the Family Research Council — which recently was granted tax-exempt status as a “church” by the IRS — tweeted a comment from Al Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary: “The Biden administration and the Department of Justice, … and I include the FBI in that, had better very quickly indicate why it was considered necessary to search the private residence of a former president of the United States.”
Mohler publicly endorsed Trump in the 2020 election and said no Christian could vote for the Democratic Party.
Conservative political commentator Todd Starnes — a former writer for the SBC’s Baptist Press — tweeted: “The FBI desecrated Trump’s house, America. You think he’s going to turn the other cheek? May God have mercy on the FBI.”
Mike Huckabee
And former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee — an ordained Southern Baptist pastor — posted a lengthy diatribe against the FBI and the Biden administration.
“It seemed in 2016 to be just a handful of rogue FBI and DOJ officials,” he wrote. “But we now know beyond doubt, with the shameful pre-dawn raid by 30+ FBI agents on former President Donald Trump’s Mar-A-Lago home to confiscate 15 boxes of materials, that it’s a systemic, methodical, highly orchestrated attempt to shut half the country completely out.”
To defeat this evil plan of the leftists, Huckabee said, all Americans should rally around Republican candidates in the upcoming mid-terms and around Trump in the 2024 presidential election.
“We need to rally around him and simply say, ‘He is the candidate.’ He WILL be re-elected. That’s because he’s the only candidate who’ll have the guts to take on this incredibly corrupt machine. We MUST put him back in and let him do this. I’m convinced at this point that this is the only hope for our nation, to get it back to the point where people can believe in it. As it stands now, half of us, if not more than half, do not.”
Huckabee — whose daughter stood before national media and lied for Trump as White House press secretary — called the FBI raid “the most flagrant abuse of power I’ve seen in America in my lifetime.”
Republican candidate for governor of Arkansas Kari Lake speaks during CPAC Texas 2022 conference at Hilton Anatole in Dallas on August 6, 2022. (Photo by Lev Radin/Sipa USA)(Sipa via AP Images)
That was mild compared to the dire warning issued by Kari Lake, a Trump-backed Arizona Republican gubernatorial nominee. If conservatives don’t get out and vote — or perhaps do more — they will be persecuted just like Trump, she said.
“This is one of the darkest days in American history: the day our government, originally created by the people, turned against us. This illegitimate, corrupt regime hates America and has weaponized the entirety of the federal government to take down President Donald Trump,” Lake said. “As governor, I will fight these tyrants with every fiber of my being. America — dark days lie ahead for us. May God protect us and save our country.”
Above the law?
In trying to interpret these evangelical defenses of Trump, Greg Sargent of the Washington Post tweeted: “The GOP position is that Trump is above the law. That’s what the GOP position on Trump was throughout his presidency, and that’s what it is now. Say it that way. Don’t let Republicans get away with using fake outrage to obscure this fundamental reality.
And author Sarah Posner offered this: “Remember too that much of Trump’s base believes that God anointed him, that it’s God’s will that he be back in the White House. And that they need to engage in ‘spiritual warfare’ with ‘demonic’ enemies of Trump — keep this in mind as right-wing influencers call for civil war.”
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