Coup-plotter Donald Trump and aspirational fascist Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis both headed to Washington, D.C., today to speak in front of two far-right groups. But in their writeup about the event, The New York Times omits one of the most pertinent tidbits about exactly who the two presidential candidates are going out of their way to court.
The events — a Pray Vote Stand Summit organized by the Family Research Council and a leadership summit of the Concerned Women for America Legislative Action Committee — will be a showcase for the evangelical voters with whom ...
Stop, stop right there. An important bit of information being left out here is that the Family Research Council has been a Southern Poverty Law Center-designated hate group for a very long time now, thanks to the group's incessant false claims about LGBTQ+ people worldwide.
Run by deplorable demagogue Tony Perkins, It's quite specifically an anti-LGBTQ hate group. There's no secondary purpose there. It is "evangelical" only in the sense that it caters to the far-far-right by claiming that conservative religion dictates they get to hate, discriminate against, and oppress LGBTQ+ people if they add "because Jeebus said so" at the end. It's a group that spreads false information about LGBTQ+ Americans to justify a new American theocracy, and it’s the "spreads false information to justify oppression" part that turns a group into a hate group
As of this writing, the CNN version of the story also ignores the Family Research Council's hate group status. Ditto for CNBC.
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That's not unusual, either. For some reason, the national media just cannot get enough of quoting and normalizing Perkins' little hate outfit. Perhaps they think that the hate group's hoaxes about LGBTQ+ Americans are something to giggle over. Perhaps this is just the usual press inability to think poorly of even the most bigoted hate-spewing monster if they've got the dexterity to put on a tie. But the Family Research Council is largely a media creation, because the cable channels and major media outlets jump over themselves to get quotes from this nasty lying asshole every time an LGBTQ+ person anywhere in the world suggests they'd like to be able to live their lives without evangelical assholes crawling up from under the floorboards to demand that they do no such thing. That made Perkins powerful enough to host his little fascist shindigs, and here we are.
So that's who Trump and DeSantis are going to pay homage to today: a bunch of straight-up child groomers who think your children belong to them. Donald Trump can sexually abuse whoever he wants, break whatever laws he wants, and take whatever national secrets he wants, and these chucklefuck self-described "evangelicals" will still consider him the second coming of Jesus. Because what's important is that Donald Trump hates: He hates good and hard and often. That is the motivating force that drives anyone and everyone who would travel to Washington, D.C., to attend a Family Research Council event.
As for the Concerned Women For America, known waggishly in other circles as Ladies Against Women ... well, it's not a hate group, at least. Theocratic and sexual abuser-promoting, yes, but mostly a rentable brand name at this point.
Perhaps "evangelicals" really are best represented by a hate group and an organization founded in opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment. And perhaps unrepentant seditionists, rapists, fascists, and dictator-fluffers are what "evangelicals" want most in their leaders. But DeSantis and Trump are going to this meetup to appeal to the hoax-promoting, hate-fueled far-right faction that they're both fighting for dominance of. Neither one of them gives two shits about "evangelical." They're there to promote hate, hate, and more hate.
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