The derision coming from Republicans towards Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York), as well as Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Michigan) and Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minnesota) is being fueled, at least in part, by RW evangelicals who have been spewing some really insane crap through their media. The attacks have have increased on AOC since she began talking about the Green New Deal , which RW evangelicals believe is demonically inspired, because Socialism.
In some instances the appearances by members of Congress on these shows gives an air of legitimacy to their bat$hit crazy conspiracy theories.
On February 8th, The Religious Right group Intercessors for America president, Dave Kubal, after conducting an interview with Republican Rep. Jody Hice of Georgia during a monthly prayer call, went on a delusional rant about witches in the heart of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's District:
“It’s been widely publicized that there is a coven of witches that cast spells on President Trump 24 hours a day, seven days a week. This particular coven is found in the southern portion of New York City. He added that the southern portion of New York City also happens to be where the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York sits, which is where the case involving Trump’s former personal attorney, Michael Cohen, was overseen by Judge Kimba Wood. Kubal then noted that Wood had officiated the wedding of George Soros in 2013, and that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was in attendance at the service. So, right in the middle of all of this, the southern district, in the middle of where these witches are doing the 24/7 spell-casting, we find the territory of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez,” Kubal added. “Her district is in the center of all of this going on."
On February 10th, right-wing commentator Chris McDonald on his Sunday program declared that the political agenda promoted by elected officials like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Bernie Sanders is “of the devil. “God does not like evil tyranny destroying people and destroying a nation,” he said. “It is God’s fight, folks. This is not our fight, this is his fight. He wants America free. He doesn’t want it under the bonds of socialism and communism. He wants men to be free to worship God. That’s Satan’s theology,” he continued. “Bernie’s theology is of the devil. Ocasio-Cortez’s theology is of Satan … This is a spiritual war, folks.”
On February 13th, Worldview Weekend’s Brannon Howse appeared on the “Stand in the Gap” radio program, where he declared that Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has “demonic connections” and is doing the bidding of “the demonic realm.”
”Someone is pulling her strings, or there is some demonic connections going on here where she is just living out what the demonic realm wants,” Howse said. “I am not sure which one; maybe both.”
RW evangelicals don’t claim that Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar are witches or controlled by demons, yet. They do however believe that they are dangerous.
On February 1st, The Intercessors for America tRump prayer group welcomed anti-Muslim activists Frank Gaffney and Philip Haney to their monthly prayer call. It ended with a return visit from Rep. Mike Bost (R-IL), who led prayers about divisions in the U.S., seemingly oblivious to the fact that the rest of the call had been devoted to inflaming those divisions. The call was joined by nearly 2,000 prayer warriors, according to Intercessors for America president, Dave Kubal. Gaffney is one of the twenty-five members of tRump’s Evangelical Executive Advisory Board.
Before Gaffney even spoke, Kubal attacked Reps. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) and Ilhan Omar (D-MN), two Muslim women who were elected to Congress in November. Kubal charged that by choosing to use a Quran rather than a Bible for their ceremonial swearing in, the two representatives were “putting their allegiance to the Quran over the Constitution.”
Gaffney declared that the problem the U.S. is facing in confronting “Sharia supremacism” is a form of “spiritual warfare.” In response to a question about Tlaib and Omar speaking at a congressional reception hosted by the Center for American Islamic Relations (CAIR), which Kubal called a “terrorist-linked organization,” Gaffney said that’s only part of the problem.
Then Gaffney barfed up the following: “What makes congresswomen like Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar, and for that matter Congressman André Carson–who is not a freshman, he is senior member of the House Intelligence Committee—so dangerous is that they are not simply talking to an outfit that I think is properly described as Hamas doing business as CAIR, but that they fully share the Muslim Brotherhood’s ideology and ambitions to achieve the triumph of Sharia in our country too.”
On February 14th, Karyn Turk, host of Red America Radio declares that it is blatantly obvious that Rep. Ilhan Omar “is a sleeper cell.
Former disgraced FBI agent John Guandolo has been on the lecture circuit for a few years now, ranting about the dangers of the Islamic faith.
Guandolo said that it was unconstitutional for Democrats Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and Ilhan Omar of Minnesota to serve in Congress because they are Muslim and the Founding Fathers intended that “only Christians should hold public office. I’ve been hammered by the usual suspects in the Marxist media and the jihadi organizations around the country for saying recently on an interview that there is no way that those people should be, can be elected under the Constitution,” he said. “You cannot subscribe to an ideology that seeks to overthrow the Constitution and be lawfully elected. Anybody who swears an oath to the Constitution has a duty to ensure that never takes place and the Department of Justice and the Attorney General should have stepped in, but, as we know, there seems to be no demonstration in the Department of Justice of anything that resembles courage.”
The attacks on AOC, Tlaib, and Omar are not going to stop if much of the attacks are based in irrational paranoid fear, which unfortunately they are.
Right Wing Watch has been documenting these kinds of attacks and I highly recommend reading it, although I find it chilling, to say the least.