It gets really bizarre
Trump Christian Wanted To Kill The President Of The USA
The Iowa caucuses that will determine the Republican presidential nomination in 2024 are just 14 days away now.
In his push to secure Iowa’s support for the presidential nomination, former president Donald Trump has announced the endorsement of his campaign by 302 religious leaders, a group that he calls the Iowa Faith Leader Coalition.
This podcast is not produced by this Iowa Faith Leader Coalition. Instead, this podcast is produced as an independent investigation of the Iowa Faith Leader Coalition. The goal of this podcast is to provide voters, in Iowa and across the United States, with more information about the activities of the Iowa Faith Leader Coalition, and details of its membership.
Donald Trump’s Iowa Faith Leader Coalition has been almost completely ignored by major journalistic organizations. Only one journalist, Mark Alesia, writing for Raw Story, has investigated the membership of the Iowa Faith Leader Coalition.
Why have no other reporters covered the Iowa Faith Leader Coalition, beyond the generic story that Donald Trump has claimed support from “evangelical leaders”? The members of the Iowa Faith Leader Coalition are being touted as power brokers in the Iowa caucuses. So, why are no journalists other than Mark Alesia investigating who they are?
One of the answers is that there just aren’t that many journalists left. Once upon a time, most American households paid for a daily delivery of a local newspaper. Now, most American households get their news from online websites and social media networks. Often, those digital sources don’t employ any genuine journalists at all.
Another reason for the paucity of reporting on the Iowa Faith Leader Coalition is that many Americans, journalists included, presume that religious leaders don’t need investigation. News organizations are reluctant to cause offense by asking probing questions about what leaders of religious organizations do with their power.
Given this context, Mark Alesia deserves some recognition for the reporting he has done about the Iowa Faith Leader Coalition.
In today’s episode of this podcast, I will summarize what Mark Alesia discovered when he looked behind the curtain at the Iowa Faith Leader Coalition.
Mark Alesia discovered the sinister religious violence of David Pautsch. David Pautsch is a long-time Christian Nationalist activist and founder of Thy Kingdom Come Ministries in Davenport, Iowa. He is currently running for Iowa’s 1st district seat in the US House of Representatives.
Also, David Patsch once called for the killing of the President of the United States.
As revealed by Mark Alesia, David Pautsch has exhibited problems with anger management in the past.
Instead of turning the other cheek and loving his enemies as Jesus told his followers to do, David Pautsch suggested that the President of the United States, Barack Obama, should be hauled into a public square and hung by his neck until he was dead. Pautsch called for the killing of the President on the basis of the false belief that Obama, as a black man, could not possibly be a citizen of the United States.
Pautsch has also come to running to the support of violent white supremacists, arguing that neo-Nazi skinheads are just normal people who ought to feel good about themselves. When asked what he thought about the phrases “white supremacist” and “white nationalist”, David Pautsch said, “Why are those offensive words?”
David Pautsch is running as a Republican candidate for the US Congress in Iowa’s 1st district.
Pautsch argues that only Christians should be allowed to hold elected office in the United States, saying, “It is impossible to rightly govern a nation without God and the Bible.”
In 2019, David Pautsch declared that “the cultures that have embraced Christ have flourished — and those that haven't are stuck in a degraded state.” This statement is plainly historically ignorant. Apparently, Pautsch hasn’t heard of China and India. Both countries have populations of over a billion people and have histories of powerful, culturally significant civilizations lasting thousands of years. Christians only make up about 2 percent of the population in both India and China.
Donald Trump himself praises India. “America loves India. America respects India,” he declared in 2020. Trump has repeatedly said that China is beating America economically and will soon dominate the United States militarily. How can these statements from Trump acknowledging the tremendous power of two non-Christian nations be reconciled with David Pautsch’s claim that non-Christian cultures are stuck and degraded?
There can be no reconciliation, logically. But then, David Pautsch’s analysis of history isn’t based in logic, or in facts. David Pautsch’s pseudohistory is founded in his faith. He cannot maintain his Christian Nationalist ideology while acknowledging the longstanding success of non-Christian cultures. So, Pautsch rejects reality.
In another rejection of simple reality, Pautsch says that all non-Christian religions are nothing more than demon worship. “Anyone who worships anything or anyone besides the Most High God, Jesus Christ, is worshiping devils,” Pautsch says.
David Pautsch also believes that Barack Obama is not a human, but is a literal demon. Pautsch called the Obama White House “demon infested,” and then said, “My ‘demon-infested’ comment wasn’t a play on speech. I’m talking about the real deal. The wickedness Obama has tried to foist on the US and Israel is so twisted it deserves the gallows.”
Mark Alesia also reported on another member of the Iowa Faith Leader Coalition: Joshua Graber. Alesia noted that Graber spoke at a Trump campaign rally in Waterloo, Iowa in October 2023 about how Donald Trump’s political opponents must be silenced.
Opposition to freedom of speech, of course is against the Bill of Rights in the Constitution of the United States of America. Joshua Graber is one of many members of the Iowa Faith Leader Coalition who seek to dismantle the long tradition of individual freedom in America.
Joshua Graber also has declared that all marriages in the United States must obey harsh Christian religious codes restricting who can be married and how married couples must behave. Graber signed a letter sent to the Iowa state legislature demanding that the legislators submit themselves to the power of Christian leaders. The letter stated that Christian rules about marriage must be obeyed by everyone.
Joshua Graber’s Christian Nationalism is all about putting the power of big government into the hands of religious power brokers. Nothing says big government like Christian Nationalist programs that try to decide who gets married to who.
Mark Alesia also uncovered information about the extremist beliefs of Iowa Faith Leader Coalition member Rick Bick, the pastor of the New Life Center in Ottumwa, Iowa.
Bizarrely, Rick Bick believes that he died nine years ago. After dying, Bick says, he eventually got better.
While running in his failed campaign to become Mayor of Ottumwa, Pastor Bick described his plans to deny the rights of freedom of speech and freedom of assembly to LGBTQ people there.
These basic rights are granted to all people in the United States, with no restrictions according to gender identity or sexual orientation. Yet, Rick Bick said that if he became Mayor of Ottumwa, he would deny constitutional rights to people who didn’t have the kind of sex he likes.
That’s pretty weird, if you think about it. Unfortunately, many members of the Iowa Faith Leader Coalition are like Rick Bick. They believe that local, state, and federal governments should make decisions about the way that consenting adult Americans have sex. They want the government to be able to tell you who you can have sex with, when you can have sex, and what kind of sex you can have.
The Christian Nationalists of the Iowa Faith Leader Coalition are dead serious about setting up government offices that regulate the private sex lives of people in Iowa and across America. I think that this strange, creepy agenda of sex regulation deserves some journalistic inquiry.
Unfortunately, the New York Times is not investigating the Iowa Faith Leader Coalition. The Washington Post is ignoring the story. So, we’re going to have to do the job ourselves. Day after day, until the Iowa caucuses are over, and maybe beyond then, this podcast will be giving you the information you need to know about what is really happening at Donald Trump’s Iowa Faith Leader Coalition.
Stay tuned.