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JD Vance is being criticized for a planned town hall this weekend with Lance Wallnau, a pro-Trump evangelical leader who has backed election conspiracies and accused Kamala Harris of using witchcraft.
“This is Vance’s endorsement of one of the worst, most conspiratorial, Christian supremacist spectacles in the country,” Matthew D. Taylor, a scholar at the Institute for Islamic, Christian, & Jewish Studies,” wrote on X on Thursday.
He warned the Monroeville, Pennsylvania, event would take on extra significance because it’s close to where Trump was nearly assassinated, a near-miss Trump’s more religious supporters take as divine intervention.
The Harris campaign, meanwhile, blasted Vance in a statement for appearing alongside a “conspiracy theorist” like Wallnau.
Speaking to an online talk show earlier this month, Wallnau said Kamala Harris’s debate performance was tied to witchcraft.
“She can look presidential,” Wallnau said. “That’s the seduction of what I would say is witchcraft. That’s the manipulation of imagery that creates an impression contrary to the truth, but it seduces you into seeing it. So that spirit, that occult spirit, I believe is operating on her and through her.”
The Independent has contacted Vance and Wallnau for comment.
As The Independent has reported, Wallnau is among a group of evangelical Christian leaders backing Trump as part of their goal of establishing what they call the New Apostolic Reformation, an American theocracy. As part of this campaign, Wallnau has popularized an idea known as the Seven Mountains mandate, which calls on Christians to secure positions of influence over politics, education, family, the arts, the media, business, and religion.
Vance’s town hall is a stop on a nationwide campaign of pro-Trump religious gatherings called the Courage Tour.
During a Wisconsin Courage Tour event, Wallnau doubled down on Trump’s claims that the 2020 election was stolen.
“January 6 was not an insurrection – it was an election fraud intervention!” he reportedly told the crowd.
The Texas-based religious leader has been an outspoken ally to Trump, using his widely watched media platforms to spread false claims about the 2020 presidential race and claim God had a plan to change the outcome of the election. He also appeared at Washington events in the run-up to January 6 and was at the infamous rally on January 6 itself from which the Capitol insurrection began.
Wallnau also wrote a 2016 book about Trump, God’s Chaos Candidate: Donald J Trump and the American Unraveling, which helped solidify evangelical support for the Republican.
That relationship has continued to flourish. Exit polls in 2020 showed Trump had 75 percent support from white evangelicals.
Still, Harris has a projected five-point lead in Pennsylvania, according to the latest polls.
The Texas-based Wallnau has a history of outlandish remarks, including claiming climate activists were controlled by demons.
