Category: US Politics

Jerry Falwell, Jr. tweeted his criticism of Christianity Today for its editorial calling for President Donald Trump’s removal from office, asserting the publication has revealed itself as the same “liberal evangelicals” who voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016.

“Less than 20% of evangelicals supported @HillaryClinton in 2016 but now @CTmagazinehas removed any doubt that they are part of the same 17% or so of liberal evangelicals who have preached social gospel for decades! CT unmasked!” posted Falwell, the president of Liberty University in Virginia.

Less than 20% of evangelicals supported @HillaryClinton in 2016 but now @CTmagazine has removed any doubt that they are part of the same 17% or so of liberal evangelicals who have preached social gospel for decades! CT unmasked! https://t.co/O7WjyZSwiW

— Jerry Falwell (@JerryFalwellJr) December 20, 2019

On Thursday, the editor-in-chief of Christianity Today, a publication founded by evangelist Rev. Billy Graham, wrote that Trump “should be removed from office” because he is “profoundly immoral.”

Mark Galli chastised fellow evangelicals who have supported the president. Nothing positive Trump has done or accomplished, however, he says, is of any consequence given what he claims is the president’s “grossly immoral character.”

Galli further stated the Democrats partisan impeachment hearings “have made it absolutely clear, in a way the Mueller investigation did not, that President Trump has abused his authority for personal gain and betrayed his constitutional oath.”

He added:

The impeachment hearings have illuminated the president’s moral deficiencies for all to see. This damages the institution of the presidency, damages the reputation of our country, and damages both the spirit and the future of our people. None of the president’s positives can balance the moral and political danger we face under a leader of such grossly immoral character.

Rev. Franklin Graham, Rev. Billy Graham’s son, responded to Christianity Today on Facebook, defending Trump.

“My father knew Donald Trump, he believed in Donald Trump, and he voted for Donald Trump,” Graham wrote on Facebook early Friday. “He believed that Donald J. Trump was the man for this hour in history for our nation.”

Falwell also tweeted that the Democrats’ impeachment of Trump “was their Pearl Harbor.”

The impeachment by the Democrats was their Pearl Harbor. I told the crowd at the Palm Beach GOP Christmas/Hanukkah party tonight that I predict the 2020 election will be Hiroshima and Nagasaki for the Dems! @realDonaldTrump

— Jerry Falwell (@JerryFalwellJr) December 20, 2019

“I told the crowd at the Palm Beach GOP Christmas/Hanukkah party tonight that I predict the 2020 election will be Hiroshima and Nagasaki for the Dems!” he said.

Rev. Franklin Graham responded Thursday after the Christian magazine that his late father founded published an editorial calling for President Donald Trump’s removal.

Christianity Today — founded by famed evangelist Rev. Billy Graham — published its article one day after House Democrats, in a largely party-line vote, voted to impeach Trump.

“But the facts in this instance are unambiguous: The president of the United States attempted to use his political power to coerce a foreign leader to harass and discredit one of the president’s political opponents,” the Christian magazine said. “That is not only a violation of the Constitution; more importantly, it is profoundly immoral.”

The article also cited Billy Graham in explaining why it called for Trump’s removal.

“In our founding documents, Billy Graham explains that Christianity Today will help evangelical Christians interpret the news in a manner that reflects their faith. The impeachment of Donald Trump is a significant event in the story of our republic. It requires comment,” Editor in Chief Mark Galli wrote.

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After noting that “that politics is not the end and purpose of our being,” Galli wrote that “we do feel it necessary from time to time to make our own opinions on political matters clear — always, as Graham encouraged us, doing so with both conviction and love.”

It was Christianity Today’s invocation of the late Billy Graham’s name that prompted his son to respond, Franklin Graham wrote on Facebook.

“Yes, my father Billy Graham founded Christianity Today; but no, he would not agree with their opinion piece. In fact, he would be very disappointed,” Franklin Graham wrote, before revealing that prior to his death, Billy Graham voted for Trump, who he believed to be “the man for this hour in history for our nation.”

It’s “unfathomable,” Graham said, that Christianity Today would “side with the Democrat Party in a totally partisan attack on the President of the United States.”

“Christianity Today failed to acknowledge that not one single Republican voted with the Democrats to impeach the President. I know a number of Republicans in Congress, and many of them are strong Christians. If the President were guilty of what the Democrats claimed, these Republicans would have joined with the Democrats to impeach him. But the Democrats were not even unanimous — two voted against impeachment and one voted present,” Graham added.

Minnesota Rep. Collin Peterson and New Jersey Rep. Jeff Van Drew, the latter of whom is switching his party affiliation to Republican, were the only Democrats to vote “no” on both articles of impeachment.

Democratic Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii voted “present” on both articles, which accused Trump of “abuse of power” and “obstruction of justice,” respectively.

No Republicans voted in favor of impeaching Trump.

“This impeachment was politically motivated, 100% partisan,” Graham wrote.

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“Why would Christianity Today choose to take the side of the Democrat left whose only goal is to discredit and smear the name of a sitting president? They want readers to believe the Democrat leadership rather than believe the President of the United States.”

Next, he cited Trump’s accomplishments related to helping the economy grow, defeating the Islamic State group and renegotiating trade deals.

“The list of accomplishments is long, but for me as a Christian, the fact that he is the most pro-life president in modern history is extremely important — and Christianity Today wants us to ignore that, to say it doesn’t count?” Graham wrote.

“The President has been a staunch defender of religious freedom at home and around the world — and Christianity Today wants us to ignore that? Also the President has appointed conservative judges in record number — and Christianity today wants us to ignore that? Christianity Today feels he should be removed from office because of false accusations that the President emphatically denies.”

Alleging an “inappropriate” quid pro quo on the behalf of the president, Democrats have taken issue with a July 25 call phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Trump did ask Zelensky to look into allegations of shady dealings involving former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter in Ukraine.

But Democrats have taken things a step further, claiming Trump planned to withhold about $400 million in military aid unless Ukraine publicly announced an investigation of his political opponent (Joe Biden).

While he was vice president, Biden pressured Ukraine to fire a prosecutor who had investigated Burisma Holdings, an energy company where Hunter sat on the board.

Trump eventually released the aid to Ukraine, even though an investigation into the Bidens was never launched.

According to Christianity Today, “it’s time to call a spade a spade, to say that no matter how many hands we win in this political poker game, we are playing with a stacked deck of gross immorality and ethical incompetence.”

Graham said he disagrees.

“Christianity Today said it’s time to call a spade a spade,” he wrote. “The spade is this — Christianity Today has been used by the left for their political agenda. It’s obvious that Christianity Today has moved to the left and is representing the elitist liberal wing of evangelicalism.”

“Is President Trump guilty of sin? Of course he is, as were all past presidents and as each one of us are, including myself. Therefore, let’s pray for the President as he continues to lead the affairs of our nation.”

The Western Journal has reached out to Christianity Today for comment but has not yet received a response. We will update this article if and when we do.

We are committed to truth and accuracy in all of our journalism. Read our editorial standards.

It’s long been a curiosity of interest to the right that Chicago’s draconian gun control laws have done little to stem the city’s problems with gun violence.

It’s almost as if the Windy City was an object lesson that A doesn’t necessarily stop B from happening. Who would have thought?

As someone who’s written about gun and gang violence in Chicago for some time, it’s pretty easy to become inured to it. Even for the most hard-hearted of writers, however, the death of 9-year-old Tyshawn Lee had to be an exception.

Two gang members will almost certainly be spending the rest of their natural lives behind bars for the execution-style murder of the young boy back in 2015 — a murder which was retaliation for a gang attack allegedly carried out by his father weeks earlier.

According to the New York Post, gunman Dwright Doty, 26, and 31-year-old Corey Morgan, who planned the hit, were sentenced Wednesday to a combined 155 years in prison — 90 for Doty, 65 for Morgan. Both will have to serve out the entirety of their sentences and will almost certainly die behind bars.

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“Little Tyshawn was still in his school uniform in a playground in the city’s South Side when Doty befriended him, luring him to an alley before blasting him several times at close range, the trial heard,” the Post reported.

“Seven .40-caliber shells were found by the boy’s body, along with his basketball. His autopsy showed he had tried to shield himself with his hands before a bullet struck his head.”

Morgan had turned down a 25-year plea deal to try his luck at trial, with his lawyer blaming it all on Doty.

“That execution of that 9-year-old boy has to come from one singularly evil person,” Thomas Breen told jurors. “Not from a plan. His killer did so of his own volition and for his own reason. Not at the behest or help of Corey Morgan.”

Doty’s lawyer, for his part, said Morgan had more of a motive to commit the crime; Lee’s father, Pierre Stokes, was a member of a branch of the Gangster Disciples called the Killa Ward. He was allegedly responsible for an attack which killed Morgan’s brother and wounded his mother. Morgan and Doty were members of an offshoot of the rival Black P Stones gang known as Bang Gang/Terror Dome.

Morgan had allegedly threatened revenge against “grandmamas, mamas, kids and all.”

The jury didn’t buy either explanation and neither did the judge, going by the sentences.

“Where does this mind-numbing, debilitating, senseless violence stop?” Judge Thaddeus Wilson told the courtroom in what the Chicago Tribune referred to as “impassioned” sentencing remarks. “Grandmas, mamas, kids and all are not fair game.”

Lee’s grandmother and great-grandmother, meanwhile, put out an equally impassioned statement.

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“You preyed on Tyshawn, you lied to Tyshawn, you lured Tyshawn and then you murdered Tyshawn,” they said.

“You left his little 9-year-old body in a cold alley on the ground to die. … ‘In cold blood’ does not do justice.”

It’s not just that these two men were able to get a hold of a gun to kill this 9-year-old. The details of this odious crime prove the invariable problem with gun control.

Trying to take guns out of the hands of craven individuals like these won’t do anything to solve the problem. Gangbangers can find guns and most importantly, these are people who would kill with them. You don’t murder a 9-year-old boy without having some deep moral rot within your character.

That’s the issue here. It’s not access to weaponry.

These are people who have no qualms murdering young children because of gang violence — not because they were caught in the crossfire, but because they were fair game due to what the child’s father allegedly did.

If we don’t address that moral vacuum at the heart of our country, all the gun laws in the world are meaningless. And it’s not just gun violence, either.

If you’re not a Twitter denizen, you may have missed what was known as the “conservative porn war” — a back-and-forth among conservative figures on social media about whether we should tighten restrictions on pornography for moral betterment.

Considering there are virtually no restrictions on pornography — which has been definitively identified as a health hazard that has commoditized sex and hindered normal, healthy sexual relationships between couples over the past few decades — some regulations may not be the worst thing in the world. After all, there’s a regulatory web  surrounding guns and gun ownership, and gun ownership is constitutionally protected.

However, here’s the reason that most restrictions on pornography are doomed to fail: They don’t address the underlying cultural sickness and processes that drive men to pornographic addiction and abuse. Without some kind of structure in place, all the laws in the world are wholly useless.

Likewise, Chicago officials would no doubt blame violent crimes like Lee’s murder on guns from elsewhere or lax policing, or some combination thereof. No doubt it also has something to do with the bigger clingers who still think the Second Amendment means something.

Eliminate legal gun ownership throughout the Midwest, however, and this would still happen. It’d likely happen on the same scale. Furthermore, law-abiding Chicagoans wouldn’t be able to protect themselves, like they aren’t able to now.

Tyshawn Lee’s death was a grave tragedy. It couldn’t have been prevented by gun control. Period. It’s only when we extirpate the weeds growing in our moral garden that we will be free of this kind of violence.

We are committed to truth and accuracy in all of our journalism. Read our editorial standards.

Is it a clear case of religious discrimination in government-subsidized housing or a “disgruntled” resident “giving out very misguided information?”

The key could be the difference between a local public interest story and a national outrage.

According to a news release Wednesday from the Liberty Counsel — a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt group that provides legal representation in matters pertaining to evangelical Christian values — seniors at an apartment complex in Independence, Missouri, that’s subsidized by the Department of Housing and Urban Development have been disallowed from putting up outdoor Christmas decorations, including lights and lawn decorations.

Wreaths are allowed as long as they’re called “holiday” wreaths, Liberty Counsel said.

According to reporter Todd Starnes, residents could face eviction if they don’t comply with the regulation.

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The Liberty Counsel said it had “sent a demand letter to the MACO Management Company on behalf of residents at Grandview Estates, a HUD-subsidized residential complex. MACO Management has prohibited residents from decorating their duplexes with outside Christmas decorations, including lights and yard decorations. Nothing in the lease agreement or regulations supports such a ban and residents have previously displayed Christmas lights and yard decorations for many years.”

Liberty Counsel said MACO had sent the residents a letter in which it cited “[g]overnment’s Fair Housing rules. Everyone in the complex is funded in part by Government funds, so we are required to follow their rules.”

“However, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has no such rule,” the Liberty Counsel’s release said.

Liberty Counsel Memo by The Western Journal on Scribd

In an email to The Western Journal, Tammy Delcour, the regional manager for MACO Management Co., disputed the claims and said they were based on a single “disgruntled” resident.

“We have never banned any decorations, we love our residents and holidays,” she said.

“We have a disgruntled person on our hands giving out very misguided information,” Delcour said.

However, if that wasn’t misleading, the Liberty Counsel’s letter seemed to imply that MACO hadn’t disputed its characterization of the rules in the letter.

“In its December 17, 2019 response to Liberty Counsel’s letter, the management company failed to cite any HUD or ‘Government Fair Housing Rule’ supporting the Christmas light and decoration ban,” the group said.

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“MACO Management instead claimed that its own lease agreements and ‘Rules and Regulations’ prohibit Christmas lights and decorations, but the actual language does not support the claimed ban, or MACO’s original claim,” it said.

A response to the property management company also seems to confirm that there is some kind of ban in place; it talks about how MACO previously referred to “the ‘lease agreement’ and or ‘MACO Management Rules and Regulations’ for support that residents are aware of the Christmas light ban.” These seem to be very specific allegations gleaned from a previous letter that don’t support MACO’s insistence this is just a disgruntled individual.

If the ban is in place and MACO refuses to remove it, there could be legal consequences.

“This ban violates the Fair Housing Act,” the letter continued.

“MACO is forbidden by the Act from discriminating against residents at this facility on the basis of religion,” it said. “Religious free exercise includes the display of holiday decorations. Christmas is a nationally recognized holiday and to ban religious decorations or celebrations in a federally subsidized or managed residential facility violates the Fair Housing Act and other federal laws. Any federal law or funding requirement that would restrict or prohibit residents’ religious holiday decorations would violate the First Amendment rights of the residents.”

Given the wide gulf in stories, we kind of have to wonder what is what here.

Disgruntled residents willing to make a much bigger deal out of things that wouldn’t ordinarily be an issue are nothing new, of course. That’s why we do have to be careful here.

That being said, the evidence from the letter seems problematic enough. If the First Amendment rights of these seniors are being violated, there need to be serious consequences for this.

Religious discrimination isn’t just problematic, it’s unconstitutional — particularly when these units are subsidized by the government.

Those who violate those freedoms should expect to be punished.

We are committed to truth and accuracy in all of our journalism. Read our editorial standards.

It can seem at times like the establishment media has an underlying bias against the ideals of American exceptionalism and independent dominance on the world stage, and now a potential reason for that may have been discovered.

An investigative review has revealed that several major media outlets have been, for quite some time, running paid advertisements disguised as regular news articles that are nothing more than propaganda put forward by the Chinese Communist Party, The Washington Free Beacon reported.

That pro-China propaganda is paid for and promulgated by a communist state-run media outlet known as China Daily and its paid-for ads, both online and in print, appear in American establishment media outlets like The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal, among others.

It is legal for foreign entities and governments to pay for advertising in the United States, provided it is fully disclosed as such. The problem here is that it doesn’t appear that necessary disclosure was occurring.

Based upon an expert review of the ads and federal filings, it appears that China Daily may have run afoul of the Foreign Agents Registration Act on a routine basis by failing to adequately and fully disclose the paid advertising it had purchased in the American newspapers.

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China Daily formally filed as a foreign agent in 1983, according to the Free Beacon, but declined to disclose to the Justice Department any advertising relationship with U.S. media outlets until 2012. Even then it continued to fail to fully comply with FARA by not providing a full breakdown of its spending activities and by withholding copies of paid advertisements, among other potential violations.

As per a review conducted by the Free Beacon and FARA experts of China Daily’s ads — both physical copies submitted to the DOJ as well as online copies that weren’t submitted — the Chinese propaganda pusher is believed to have purchased and run more than 700 online ads and more than 500 print ads in the major U.S. media outlets since 2012.

All of those propaganda pieces, which are cleverly disguised to appear as normal news or commentary articles, tend to frame China and the communist government in the most positive light possible while downplaying the things that China is often criticized over — such as its oppression of Tibet, the imprisoning of Muslim minorities in concentration camps in Xinjiang and the brutal crackdown on pro-freedom protesters in Hong Kong, among other things.

According to graph charts prepared by the Free Beacon, it appears the vast majority of the online ads by China Daily appeared on The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times’ websites, while a solid majority of the print ads appeared in the pages of The Washington Post and, to a lesser extent, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and British outlet Financial Times.

The fact that the U.S. media outlets have been running these propaganda ads on behalf of China’s communist government hasn’t sat well with Indiana Rep. Jim Banks, a Republican member of the House Armed Service Committee and longtime critic of China Daily. He essentially accused the American outlets of selling out their credibility for ad revenue.

“These outlets claim to support democracy, but they’ve participated in a cover-up for an ongoing communist-run genocide,” Banks told the Free Beacon. “It’s disgusting.”

China Daily declined to provide comment for the Free Beacon’s report. Spokespeople for the three major U.S. media outlets did provide various comments in defense of the practice, but all three declined to specify how much revenue had been gained by the ads sold for propaganda articles.

However, one advertising firm that has published ads in all three outlets, and requested anonymity so as not to disrupt current deals with the three, told the Free Beacon that full-page ads typically cost between $65,000 to $120,000 apiece, suggesting there are millions of dollars in revenue that are at play.

That would coincide with what financial details could be gleaned from China Daily’s FARA disclosures, which while not specific, did show that the media outlet had been infused with $11.8 million from the Chinese government over just the past year alone.

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Odds are, these U.S. media outlets running Chinese government propaganda are not unwitting dupes and while the outlets may claim that selling the ad space for propaganda has no impact on how they report when it comes to stories about China, that is just as difficult to believe.

The Western Journal has reached out to all four named outlets — The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and Financial Times — for comment but has not yet received a response. We will update this article if and when we do.

We are committed to truth and accuracy in all of our journalism. Read our editorial standards.