Loonies In Full Bloom At ReAwaken America tour at Trump Resort
The ReAwaken America tour is an ongoing, Christian nationalist, far right nightmare and it rolled into the Trump National Doral Miami resort in Miami, Fla., last week for two days of moral flatulence.
The May 12–13 tour was all about trump, with various far right speakers and oddball trump-backing pastors who talked about the beauty of QAnon and anti-Semitism, various conspiracies and political violence, all wrapped in dark, noxious, apocalyptic Biblical prophesy.
Trump did not attend the event at his own resort because he was in DesMoines, Iowa, where he had scheduled and then canceled a campaign rally. Trump said the rally was scrapped because of a tornado warning but others said he canceled out of concern that attendance would be low and he would be overshadowed by a rally that was held in DesMoines by potential GOP presidential candidate, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.
Trump spoke to the Florida audience by a cell phone. Flynn held up to the microphone on the stage as Flynn told him, “General, you just have to stay healthy because we’re bringing you back. We’re gonna bring you back.”
Flynn, a co-founder of the event, is a retired Army lieutenant general who was National Security Advisor for the first 22 days of the Trump administration. He resigned in light of reports that he had lied regarding conversations with Sergey Kislyak, the former Russian ambassador to the U.S. Flynn had entered then withdrew a guilty plea of making false statements to the F.B.I., but trump later pardoned him and the case was dropped. Flynn was also involved in the “Stop The Steal” movement that claimed that trump lost reelection because of unproven voter fraud. Flynn pleaded the fifth amendment when he declined to answer questions from a special House Committee investigating the Jan. 6 rebellion about whether the violence that day was justified.
Flynn summed up the attitude of many who desperately want trump to return to power.
“If you haven’t figured this out yet, the evil that we are facing will not give in until we take over,” said Flynn, a Christian nationalist, who pledged an oath on July 4, 2020, to the QAnon conspiracy theory. After the 2020 election, Flynn suggested that trump should suspend the Constitution, silence the press, and hold a new election under military authority.
At a November 2021 ReAwaken America tour stop, Flynn called for “one religion” in the U.S.
“If we are going to have one nation under God, which we must, we have to have one religion. One nation under God, and one religion under God,” he said.
Christian nationalists believe the U.S. and state governments should operate according to their interpretation of the Bible, and that only Christians who share their political and religious worldview should control power. Last year, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., called on Republican colleagues to become “the party of Christian nationalism.”
The tour was the latest in more than 20 conferences in more than a dozen states since it was created in 2021 by Flynn and charlatan extremist Clay Clark, a former DJ turned COVID-19 denier and strong supporter of trump’s claims that he was robbed of reelection.
The Miami conference included a bevy of self-annointed prophets. One was Amanda Grace, founder of Ark of Grace Ministries in Hopewell Junction, N.Y., which coincidentally also is the home of the Trump National Golf Club.
“Darkness has completely eclipsed the White House of this nation,” said Grace, whose ministries sell all sorts of merch in the name of God, including “Put on the full armor” T-shirts; QEStrong, a compound that promises to do everything but make you fly while it ostensibly relieves pain and anxiety, improves brainpower and sleep and more; to pillows from MyPillow guy Mike Lindell, one of the most outrageous purveyors of lies about trump’s loss in 2020.
An unhinged Grace spoke about how highly technological mermaids and water people are spreading “wickedness” and advocated for hand-to-hand combat with them. Grace warned of the “perversion” of “seductive, seducing spirits” including “mermaids and water people.”
“That’s a division in the kingdom of darkness and they’re highly technologically advanced,” she said. “And we have to understand what we’re dealing with. And we have to understand the rules of engagement in spiritual warfare. And we are meant for hand-to-hand combat.”
Another MAGA prophet, Julie Green, associate pastor at Faith Family Fellowship in Davenport, Iowa, once falsely predicted that Prince Charles would murder his mother to seize the British Royal crown. Green said the U.S. in the middle of another “Revolutionary War.”
“The removal of The Biden is coming,” Green said. “That’s what the Lord is saying.”
Not to be outdone, another “prophet,” Stacy Whited, is founder of the Flyover Conservatives facebook page based in Lees Summit, Mo. Whited said trump will be elected next year. Whited is a Christian nationalist media personality whose podcast is called “The Prophetic Report.” She told the audience to prepare to get rich because there is a great “transference of wealth from the wicked to the righteous” coming.
Right wing fortune teller, Kent Christmas, founding pastor of Regeneration Nashville in Nashville, Tenn., was not at the rally but continued to insist in an interview that trump won the 2020 election.
“In the eyes of God, the President of the United States right now in the courts of justice in Heaven is not Joe Biden, but it’s Donald Trump,” Christmas said.
In a video posted to his church’s YouTube channel, Christmas said the race between trump and Joe Biden was not political but was “a war between Heaven and Hell and it’s about the destiny of this nation.”
Prophet Jeremiah Johnson of Jeremiah Johnson Ministries of Kannapolis, N.C., was certain that trump will return to the White House as in a dream he said he had that trump was running in the Boston Marathon but stumbled just before the finish line and was supernaturally lifted to finish.
Other speakers included trump’s son, Eric, and his wife, Lara; political trickster and longtime trump advisor, Roger Stone; prominent election conspiracy theorists Mike Lindell and Sidney Powell and many others.
Two scheduled speakers, Scott McKay and Charlie Ward, who have been at previous ReAwaken America programs, were pulled from the event after reports that both had histories of making anti-Semitic statements. McKay, a You Tube personality who calls himself the “Patriot Streetfighter” has previously said that “Hitler was actually fighting the same people we are trying to put down today,” referring to the conspiracy theory that Jewish people control the world’s banks. Ward, another far right media personality, has denied the Holocaust and suggested that Jewish people were behind viral outbreaks.
Jackson Lahmeyer, an Oklahoma-based evangelical pastor and businessman, spoke as the founder of the Pastors for Trump organization which Lahmeyer said has more than 7,000 pastors as members.
“This is one of the worst points our nation has ever faced,” Lahmeyer said, condemning what he called “gender confusion” and “moral confusion.”
“Satan, right now has an entire political party in this nation doing his bidding — for free,” Lahmeyer said, referring to the Democratic party, and President Biden, who is an observant Catholic. “Our nation knows a God who rescues his people, when we find ourselves in trouble. We lift up President Donald Trump, and we ask that You would give him divine wisdom.”
Another preacher for Pastors for Trump was Mark Burns, an African American leader of the Harvest Praise & Worship Center in Easley, S.C. Burns has been a consistent trump supporter and claims that trump lost the 2020 election because of unfounded voter fraud. Burns ran unsuccessfully for Congress in 2018 and 2022 and had claimed to have served six years in the Army Reserve and had a degree from North Greenville University. He later retracted both claims and said they were on his website which he said was hacked because he is “a black man supporting Donald Trump for president.”
In his remarks, Burns said God has anointed trump to return to the presidency next year. Burns also said that Christians should not turn the other cheek, when confronted by wicked forces, but should “smack them back two times harder.”
“The bible says we take it by force,” Burns said.
In a related issue, the Family Research Council has launched a new “Association of Churches and Ministries” dedicated to “impacting the culture with biblical truth.” The council has spread trump’s lies about the 2020 election and has worked to overturn the 2020 results. The group also promotes false Christian nationalist history, is against abortion and opposes the LGBTQ community, which it considers as a threat to religious freedom.
The council was created in 1981 by James Dobson as a division of Dobson’s main organization, Focus on the Family.
In 2010, the Southern Poverty Law Center classified the council as an anti-LGBT hate group due to what it says are the group’s “false claims about the LGBT community based on discredited research and junk science” in an effort to block LGBT civil rights.