The following is a lightly edited transcript of the September 30 episode of the Daily Blast podcast. Listen to it here.
Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR Network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.
Investigators are still trying to piece together the motives driving Thomas Jacob Sanford, who drove a truck into a Mormon church on Sunday morning and opened fire, killing four people. Yet even though little is known about this man, Trump and his press secretary are already linking the killing to what they describe as a much broader outbreak of anti-Christian violence.
Trump is clearly trying to weaponize this horror in a similar way to how the right seized on the assassination of Charlie Kirk to mobilize right-wing religious passions in a highly damaging way. Few are better at explaining this type of thing than Sarah Posner, author of several books on the religious right and the Christian nationalist underpinnings of MAGA. Sarah, great to have you back on.
Sarah Posner: Thanks for having me again.
Sargent: So what we know about Thomas Jacob Sanford so far is that he was an Iraq War veteran. He had a camouflage Trump campaign T-shirt from 2020, seemed to have had a Trump-Pence sign on his backyard fence as late as June, and apparently called Mormons the Antichrist.
Sarah, what do we know about this guy, and can you explain the difference between anti-Mormon bigotry and anti-Christian bigotry?
Posner: Well, you know, I would just, as a reporter, I like to take a lot of caution in jumping to any conclusions in the immediate aftermath of one of these horrific mass-casualty events that we have too many of in this country. And so I think we have these bits of evidence that investigators have gathered and revealed so far, but I think there’s a lot we do not know about the perpetrator in this Michigan church catastrophe.
To jump to the conclusion that he was motivated either by anti-Christian bias or anti-Mormon bias is premature, notwithstanding the evidence that we have that he did say anti-Mormon things to a candidate for political office who had canvassed at his house.
The difference between anti-Christian bias and anti-Mormon bias is sort of an interesting one. For the audience that Trump is trying to reach when he claims that something is evidence of anti-Christian bias, that’s largely an evangelical audience. It’s also a right-wing Catholic audience. But many in the evangelical world, including many Trump supporters, don’t really consider the LDS church to be Christian. They don’t consider Mormons to be Christian, mainly because of their views of the role of the prophet Joseph Smith in the founding of their faith, and of the use of the Book of Mormon in addition to the Old and New Testaments, and other what they would consider to be extra-biblical teachings of the LDS faith.
Well, let’s listen to what White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said on Fox News Monday morning.
Karoline Leavitt (voiceover): His family is cooperating with the FBI. And so they are currently trying to dig in and get to the bottom of why he committed just this heinous act of violence. It’s unfathomable. And as the president rightfully put, in his Truth Social yesterday, this appears to be yet another targeted attack on Christians and the Trump administration is fully committed to not only investigating these crimes, but prosecuting them to the fullest extent of the law.
Sargent: That came after Trump said this on Sunday, “this appears to be yet another targeted attack on Christians in the United States of America.”
Posner: There’s a lot of problems with the top official in the United States—the president—and his surrogate, Karoline Leavitt, saying these things publicly before we know more about what happened.
But I think what clearly is going on with Trump, and with Leavitt’s follow on Fox News later, is that he sees the world in black and white. And so he sees everything as: How can this help me? How can this horrible tragedy help me? It can help me because I can frame it as this thing that I know gets my base excited, reminds my base that I’m on their side, reminds the base that I am the savior here to protect them from these evil elements in America who are trying to destroy Christianity in America.
I mean, that is exactly what Trump is thinking here. He’s not actually thinking that he’s going to solve anti-religious bias, or anti-religious violence, or hate crimes. He’s thinking about it in terms of how he’s going to get his base to think about how he sees the world, and how he can get his base to think about how they will continue to support him.
And so, coming on the heels of the memorial service for Charlie Kirk, where some of this us-and-them rhetoric was on display, it’s just more of the same: Trump taking advantage of a horrible tragedy to continue to frame this us-versus-them mentality.
Sargent: Yeah, and I want to highlight a certain aspect of what Karoline Leavitt said here. After saying this appears to be yet another targeted attack on Christians, she then said the Trump administration is fully committed to not only investigating these crimes, but prosecuting them. I think that’s highly suggestive language. She doesn’t quite come out and say that they’re going to start using law enforcement to go after people who they say are committing anti-Christian crimes but it sure sounds like that’s where it’s headed. What do you think?
Posner: Well given their track history, so given how during his campaign he promised a task force to combat anti-Christian bias, and I think they established such a task force, although I’m not sure what it has been doing—it’s very menacing and troubling. Because we know from past things that they’ve done in their supposed combating of anti-Semitism, for example, that they are keen on violating people’s First Amendment rights in their supposed quest to end anti-Semitism, right?
And so if they’re going to use law enforcement to combat what they see as anti-Christian bias—and they see that as preventing crimes motivated by anti-Christian bias—I mean, you can’t… you know, somebody saying something that you think is anti-Christian. And remember, they think it’s anti-Christian to, say, disagree with a pastor who’s against same-sex marriage. They think that that’s anti-Christian to say that.
I don’t know where they’re going. Given their track record, and given how they’re over-policing and militarizing the policing of cities, given how they have no compunction about violating people’s First Amendment rights—taking these things together—it’s very troubling that they are talking about this. But it’s also very much in line with things that he campaigned on, that he campaigned on combating this supposed anti-Christian bias and that he would help restore the Christian America that his followers believe they’re entitled to.
Sargent: Right. Donald Trump basically campaigned on a Christian nationalist platform without saying it quite as explicitly as certain others in MAGA have.
I want to switch to the Charlie Kirk killing because MAGA forces seized on that big time to try to foment a sense that we’re in the middle of a massive national spiritual war. The Atlantic had a good summary of this. Pete Hegseth said we’re in a spiritual war. Benny Johnson said the Defense Department—or, I guess, the Department of War now—is functionally an instrument of God, meaning the Christian God. It’s an instrument of the Christian God—the Army and the Navy and the full armed forces.
The far-right influencer Jack Posobiec called on followers to put on the armor of God and get ready for spiritual warfare.
Sara, you know this language in and out. You’ve studied it a long time. What are they really trying to do here? What’s their real aim?
Posner: Well, their real aim is to, A, have their followers believe that they are in a cosmic battle between good and evil in which they will save Christian America from evil forces within it that they claim hate America and hate Christianity and hate the idea of America as a Christian nation.
So because of this, right, a lot of their followers literally do think of Democrats or liberals or anyone who disagrees with them as, like, literally evil or part of a satanic force that’s anti-American. So he’s fomenting this good-versus-evil mindset, this spiritual warfare mindset. And, you know, for some people, maybe that spiritual warfare goes another step further or they think it’s okay to, you know, say, storm the Capitol on January 6th, right? And even if they don’t go that far, just thinking of your fellow citizens that way is very damaging to the republic.
But they—the Trumpers—really want to kind of continually have grist for this mill, right? And so this tragedy that happened in Michigan, it’s so horrific that they would use it to, you know, threaten people, sort of suggest that, you know, we’re going to come looking for anybody who we think is anti-Christian.
Sargent: We should probably underscore the fact that Pete Hegseth is the Defense Secretary, and for him to say that we’re in a spiritual war after a very prominent Christian was killed seems highly problematic—particularly when, A, he’s got troops marching into cities across the country at this point, and B, he’s recalling all these generals from around the world for some sort of shadowy meeting with some sort of aim that is really, I think, unknown at this point.
It seems to me that we need to not be naive about what we’re seeing—is, I guess, what I’m getting at.
Posner: Right. I think that’s true. I think it’s easy enough to think they’re just trying to capitalize on these tragedies to score rhetorical political points. But I think when you put it in the context of sending troops to Portland and sending troops to Chicago, and this meeting where Hegseth is [reportedly] going to tell the generals about the warrior ethos that they’re supposed to have—Trump is going to go and supposedly tell them that he loves them, whatever that means—I think that because we have the January 6th example, and that a lot of the people who went to January 6th were very motivated by this idea that, you know, the lost election had to have been caused by fraud or lies or some kind of…
Sargent: By Satan.
Posner: Right. But also just like by the deep state, you know, all of this kind of rhetoric and that they were engaging in spiritual warfare by just going to the Capitol that day.
Sargent: Right. But Sarah, just to be super clear for our audience, because they’re not really as sort of tapped into this as you are, they actually mean that the deep state and Democrats and election’s officials were the instruments of Satan, right?
Posner: Well, yeah, well, the deep state is definitely an instrument of Satan and anybody who’s against what they perceive to be or what they claim to be the Christian nation is part of a satanic force that’s against, you know, America as a Christian nation. And maybe that didn’t motivate every single person who went to January 6th. But my point is that we have an example of when people got so riled up by Donald Trump, that that’s what they did. Now layer onto that, these troop mobilizations and this heavy-handed, heavy-handed policing by ICE and, you know, other law enforcement threats that, that Trump is instigating. You know, it’s very worrisome about how some people might perceive and act on these kinds of things.
Sargent: Well, I think there’s very little doubt that someone like Pete Hegseth actually believes that Democrats and secular liberals and election officials and so forth are enemies of the Christian nation. And whether he believes it’s justified to then turn the troops loose on them, I don’t know—but I don’t think it’s that huge a leap.
And so if you take Donald Trump, who’s never had an authentic religious thought in his entire life or an authentic religious aspiration in his entire life, who talked about shooting protesters and who pardoned the January 6th rioters after they violently tried to overthrow the U.S. government, it seems like what you might call an unholy alliance: to have someone that sort of cynical and that willing to use the law as a weapon in Donald Trump, and then allied with a movement—or at least sections of a movement—who see Democrats and secular liberals as the enemy and want every Christian in this country, at least every Trump-supporting Christian in this country, to believe that we are out to get them.
It just seems like a problem.
Posner: Yes, no doubt. And I would just add one more thing here is that there is a solution to the epidemic of gun violence that we are experiencing in the United States right now, and that is gun control. But one of the demographic groups that is most against gun control are white evangelical Christians. There is one way to prevent mass shootings, and that is not letting people have guns, but that is not even on the table. The notion that they won’t even acknowledge that lack of gun control is part of the problem is just infuriating.
Sargent: Just to tie this up, what’s the worst case scenario here in terms of them weaponizing these types of events to try to drum up a sense among Christian America that they’re under siege from, well, you and me?
Posner: Yeah, I mean, the worst-case scenario is, you know, that they might start surveilling and/or arresting people for their speech. I wonder a little bit whether they—would they ever, you know, try to prevent somebody from getting a gun based on their speech? That part I don’t—I actually don’t know. I think they might be afraid of the downstream consequences of that.
But, you know, on the other hand, I don’t want to be too alarmist about it because they also say a lot of things that they don’t carry out, right? And so this might just be them thinking this is a good messaging opportunity for us at this particular moment when Trump has had a lot of, let’s say, PR losses lately. Right.
So if they were to carry out what Leavitt suggested today on Fox News, that would be really bad. But on the other hand, they might not actually carry it out because you’re always looking for these messaging opportunities—especially in light of, you know, he just completely lost the Jimmy Kimmel situation. You know, tariffs are becoming more of a political liability for him. He’s trying to end the war in Gaza and Ukraine without any success whatsoever. And there might be a government shutdown.
So, you know, there are a lot of other sort of countervailing things. I don’t want people to, you know, dismiss the possibility of bad things that they could do, but I also don’t want to be too alarmist about it.
Sargent: Yep. We got to get the balance right between being incredibly vigilant, but also not letting it spook us into inaction. Sarah Posner, thank you so much for coming on. Always great to talk to you.
Posner: Thanks, Greg.