The defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, will this weekend headline a faith rally on the National Mall in Washington DC hosted by a private foundation operating in partnership with the White House, which includes some speakers that experts have characterized as Christian nationalist or extremist.
Rededicate 250, billed as the faith-based component of America’s semiquincentennial, features speakers including a Detroit pastor who has called the Democratic platform “demonic” and launched his own memecoin after praying at Trump’s second inauguration; a rabbi who has defended the use of torture and authored an essay titled The Virtue of Hate; and a Christian author and radio host who said in 2020 he would die in the fight to keep Joe Biden out of the White House and was later named in a defamation suit over 2020 election fraud claims.
