#705: Newt Gingrich

[Note: This portrait is of course a bit one-sided, and the use of evidence somewhat selective. I am of course relying on the fact that people already have a picture of this guy, so instead of providing a full, rounded picture I restrict the post to providing evidence for why it is correct to classify him as a loon]

Newton Leroy “Newt” Gingrich is one of the world’s staunchest defenders of family values, famous – for instance – for leading the charge to impeach Bill Clinton for lying under oath about adulterous activities, while concurrently having an affair with a Capitol Hill staffer. “It doesn't matter what I do ... People need to hear what I have to say. There's no one else who can say what I can say. It doesn't matter what I live,” said Gingrich, which is OK until you look at what he actually is saying. You see, during the 2012 Republican primaries he made it pretty clear that if you don’t elect him America would in short time turn into a secular, atheist, Islamic fundamentalist country, asserting that there is a conspiracy between Islamic fundamentalists and secularists to hijack America – the thing is, as he told Janet Mefferd, there is an “intolerant elite” made up of “secular judges and religious bigots” who are trying to promote “radical Islam over Christianity and Judaism” (also here). And just check out his erudite analysis of beach volleyball, while you are at it, or – perhaps more disconcertingly – his assertion that unemployment benefits violate the Declaration of Independence. At least Gingrich doesn’t take prisoners in his attacks on the liberal elites.

Republican Primaries

His entry into the presidential nomination race (not always without scandals) provided onlookers with a mixture of hilarity, horror, and revulsion, though it did make him have to change his positions on some ideas in predictably unpredictable ways. As with so many fundie crazies, Gingrich doesn’t appreciate the division of power (as long as he has it), and did for instance claim that the president can simply ignore the Supreme Court if it issues a ruling he doesn’t like and said that he would order his administration to do so if elected (Gingrich is on the record for wanting to outlaw judicial review and claiming that the president should be able to abolish any courts that don’t agree with him, to arrest judges who come up with rulings he doesn’t like, and that judges should come from fundamentalist Christian lawschools such as Liberty “University”). And as with so many fundie crazies he only acted because God told him to. And as with so many fundie crazy presidential candidates he pledged to combat gay rights, and as with so many crazy presidential candidates he is a signatory to Mississippi’s radical personhood amendment, which nicely sums up such people’s approach to reality: if the facts disagree with you, you can get them to agree with you by fiat and declaration.

Gingrich is a fan of the phrase “secular-socialist machine,” which is apparently supposed to be derogatory. According to Gingrich (though denied by reality), Obama is the most radical president in US history who uses Saul Alinsky tactics and Chicago politics to refashion the US into a dreaded “high-tax low-growth” society. Thus, Obama represents as great a threat to America as Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union did, which given the state of Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union at present may be true, but not in the way Gingrich intended. A slightly different source of “all our problems” is apparently that children in public schools are not forced to pray. In the same vein, he has said that non-believers should not be considered for public office, since he “would be really worried if somebody assured me that nothing in their faith would affect their judgments, because then I’d wonder, where’s your judgment — how can you have judgment if you have no faith? And how can I trust you with power if you don’t pray?” Indeed, he said that he would want to fire federal employees who are too liberal, and has likewise advocated David Barton’s Christian Nation mythology and historical revisionism, denied that there is a separation of church and state, and called for the restoration of the ‘Church Militant’. Of course, his defense of these matters was full of rather blatant falsehoods, but that has never bothered presidential candidates much before and was unlikely to start to do so with Newt Gingrich.

To show how much he cared about reason and religious liberty, Gingrich named “Apostle” Dutch Sheets to his faith leaders coalition.

Science

As for science, Gingrich mocked anyone who accepts evolution by asking “do you think … we’re randomly gathered protoplasm? We could have been rhinoceroses, but we got lucky this week?”, which is not quite how biologists would describe the process of evolution – though Gingrich has supported evolution, and even climate change, before; he is, in other words, probably primarily spineless, as opposed to Perry, Bachmann, and Santorum, who are probably actual creationists (maybe except for Bachmann, whose beliefs are so incoherently dumb that they don’t add up to anything whatsoever). It is unclear whether Gingrich actually believed the idiocy he spewed here (a classic case of projection from hell, in which he also seems to deny that we may some day run out of oil).

Aftermath

Gingrich did screw himself over pretty thoroughly during his bid for the presidential nomination, including running himself into the ground financially. Hopefully we have heard the very last of him.

There is a slightly dated list of quotes and incidents here, a fine resource here, and a good list of Gingrich’s most appalling political positions here. You can also test your ability to distinguish Gingrich from various supervillains here.

Diagnosis: A walking, talking Onion article, and as with the Onion there are actually people who mistakes it for genuine. In any case he is a horrible person.

Of course, we have to mention Paul Krugman’s quote: “Gingrich is what stupid people think a smart person sounds like,” though the quote originally belongs to Elizabeth Bowen talking about Aldous Huxley (comment 22).

#2800: Myron Ebell

“Nobody has done more damage to efforts to address the climate crisis before it’s too late than Ebell. He has devoted his career to mortgaging the planet for future generations through his paid promotion of denial, delay and dissembling”

-       Michael Mann

 

If anyone can be called “leader” of the climate change denialist movement in the US today, it might be Myron Ebell. Ebell is former Director of Global Warming and International Environmental Policy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) and (until 2024) chairman of the Cooler Heads Coalition, a group devoted to what they perceive as “dispelling the myths of global warming by exposing flawed economic, scientific, and risk analysis”. What Ebell is not, is a scientist, and he has no background in science. And although he of course claims to advocate “for sensible energy policies that benefit everyone. Instead of policies that simply reacts [sic] to alarmism,” Ebell has tirelessly used his positions and organization to promote climate change denialism. In September 2016, Ebell was appointed by then-presidential candidate Donald Trump to lead his transition team for the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

 

Ebell rose to prominence as a climate change denialist in the 1990s, after making a name for himself as a staunch critic of what he saw as Newt Gingrich’s radical environmentalism. In 1998, he and a group of PR experts and wingnut think-tank representatives (such as David Rothbard and Steve Milloy)  produced a “Global Climate Science Communications” plan aimed to convince “a majority of the American public” and policymakers that “significant uncertainties exist in climate science” – yes, the plan was explicitly to manufacture uncertainty – and that the science was inaccurate and should be ignored. Though CEI was funded by ExxonMobil, the American Petroleum Institute, the Dow Chemical Company and the Murray Energy Corporation coal mining group, Ebell has reassured everyone that “We’re not beholden to our donors”. Ebell was, however, instrumental in getting then-president George W. Bush to drop any pledge to curb emisions, withdraw from the Kyoto protocol, and to push out people at the EPA who were willing to actually use facts as an important element in their decision making (some more details about Ebell and the CEI’s involvement with the Bush administration here).

 

For the last two decades, Ebell has been a favorite go-to person for media outlets seeking to achieve a false balance between scientific consensus and layperson Ebell’s scientific denialism, a position Ebell (and CEI colleagues like Marlo Lewis, Iain Murray or Christopher Horner, author of the wingnut conspiracy theory piece of disinformation The Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming) has used e.g. to dismiss UK’s then-Chief Scientist David King (a real scientist) as “an alarmist with ridiculous views who knows nothing about climate change.” Ebell has also criticized climate scientist James Hansen's by claiming that “James Hansen was not trained as a climate scientist. He was trained as an astronomer. He’s a physicist” and climate scientist and Arctic expert Robert Corell as “not a climate scientist” and “not an Arctic expert”. As for his own complete lack of scientific training, Ebell maintins that “people other than scientists [should] be allowed to participate” because “that [is] what a representative democracy is” (we can’t help but wonder why Ebell put ‘representative’ in there, even though that’s hardly the most glaring problem with his reasoning).

 

Ebell and the CEI have affirmed their opinion that global warming is a hoax (so much for “uncertainties”), that the data predicting climate change are false, and that the scientific consensus is “phony”, and they have weighed in on most significant events and findings with predictable denialist talking points and conspiracy theories, such as when a Climatic Research Unit computer server at the University of East Anglia was hacked and thousands of emails leaked in 2009: quick to attempt to muddy the waters, Ebell claimed – without any basis in reality – that the hacked emails “make it clear that the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is an organized conspiracy dedicated to tricking the world into believing that global warming is a crisis that requires a drastic response.” Ebell also falsely thinks (or at least: claims) that “the rate of warming according to the data is much slower than the models used by the IPCC,” which is not supported by anything, though remember that Ebell’s goal is not to get it right but to convince you that the science is unclear and can be ignored – “if he deserves credit for anything – I would call it a black mark – it would be taking the tobacco playbook and applying it to climate change,” said Jeremy Symons, the assistant vice president for climate political affairs at the Environmental Defense Fund, of Myron Ebell. Ebell is at least abundantly clear that science, knowledge, evidence and research should be ignored when coming to conclusions about facts.

 

In 2006, CEI did a TV commercial about carbon dioxide with the slogan “They call it pollution; we call it life.” Ebell, meanwhile wrote a Forbes article called “Love Global Warming”, pointing out that “More people die from blizzards and cold spells than from heat waves.”

 

And of course he is the underdog here: Ebell has compared his efforts to fight science with funding from the oil industry and politicians as a “David versus Goliath struggle” against “corrupt environmentalism and big government”; the “environmental movement is not an objective, well-intentioned movement that cares about saving the planet” but a ploy instigated by Marxist and the radical left to ensure “lower material standards of living, more government control, and more power for the technocratic elite.”

 

In 2024, Ebell retired from CEI, citing (a.o.) alleged side effects from COVID-19 vaccines. Yes, if you’re career has been devoted to science denialism and conspiracy theories in one area, why not go for ideologically motivated denialism and conspiracy theories everywhere? Current CEI president CEI President Kent Lassman at least said he was “tremendously grateful” for Ebell’s work: “As a result, we enjoy an enviable position as a leader on crucial issues to the future of America and the economy.”

 

Ebell was also a signatory to a 2021 letter, authored by Cleta Mitchell, urging Senate Republicans to “protect the republic” by contesting electors from battleground states won by Joe Biden in an attempt to overturn the 2020 election.

 

There is a decent Myron Ebell portrait here.

 

Diagnosis: According to the Sierra Club, Myron Ebell is “One of the single greatest threats our planet has ever faced”. He is, without doubt, one of the most influential climate change denialists in the US, and one of the least principled ones when it comes to willingness to subvert facts to serve ideology. We have no doubt, however, that one of the first victims of Ebell’s disinformation campaigns was himself – the distinction between spineless fraud and true believer is messy here.

#1292: Keith Ablow

Dr. Keith Ablow is a psychiatrist, author, and media personality, who tends to appear on such intellectually enlightening shows as The Tyra Banks Show and Glenn Beck as an expert on psychoanalysis. He even writes for Fox News’ blog devoted to health matters, where he tends to make claims that go against all evidence when it serves a particular political point, and runs a self-empowerment community based around his book Living the Truth. Though his credentials are fine, his psychiatric analyses of famous individuals or talk-show guests on the basis of thirty-second interviews or news headlines have not been recognized as methodologically sound by any psychiatrist with any integrity.

For instance, when analyzing Jiverly Voong, who went on a mass shooting spree in Binghamton, for the Glenn Beck Show, Ablow produced this piece of exasperating bullshit. The Chris Lane murder, on the other hand, he blamed on facebook and abortion laws because, well, because Ablow doesn’t like abortion. And after the 2012 vice-presidential debate Ablow delivered such a crackpot medical analysis of Vice President Biden’s debate performance that even the Fox & Friends hosts had to call him out; based on criteria even the hosts recognized as medically spurious Ablow claimed Biden should be examined for dementia.

A telling piece of psychoanalysis was embedded in his advice for President Obama: “The president needs to look at himself and say, ‘Do I have prejudice that I wasn’t even aware of, perhaps, towards white people?’” He also claimed that Obama is waging psychological warfare. How? Because Obama admitted that America has made mistakes in foreign policy, and that admission was apparently intended to demoralize the country. “Barack Obama does not have the will of the American people, Americanism, in his soul,” says Ablow: “He wants out of America, my friend. Trust me.” Ah, those prejudices one isn’t even aware of! And then there are Obama’s insidious tricks: In 2014 Ablow could declare that the FIFA world cup is something “Obama is using […] to distract attention.” He didn’t mention from what. Nor did he seem aware that Obama was not involved in arranging the world cup.

On Fox News Ablow has also claimed that Newt Gingrich’s infidelity and open marriage policy could make him a superior president, just because.

As with rightwing cranks in general Ablow is deeply concerned with gender issues (as in this). Thus, he has urged parents not to let their children watch Chaz Bono on “Dancing with the stars,” ostensibly because he is very concerned for the children. It’s hard not to suspect that he isn’t really thinking of the children. Maybe he was when he suggested that sex education is “a Trojan horse inside the schools”, and by receiving such education “they’re going to start talking about threesomes, and they’re going to be talking about everything that’s okay.” He didn’t actually explain whose Trojan horse it was, but you can all guess, I suppose.

More recently, he has demanded a surgeon general’s warning on the internet, especially on discussions of things Ablow perceives as dangerous. “The Surgeon General has been a no-show on Facebook. […] Where is the Surgeon General?” asks Ablow, suggesting a scandalous level of neglect to rival Benghazi. Though perhaps not quite as scandalous as the "fact" that Obama welcomes ebola to the US because his “affinities” are with Africa and he “may literally believe we should suffer along with less fortunate nations.” That’s right. Obama is in a conspiracy against the US. Why did people elect him? According to Ablow’s professional opinion people have been suffering from the Stockholm Syndrome after 9/11 and therefore elected someone “who has names very similar to two of our archenemies, Osama, well, Obama. And Hussein.”

Diagnosis: Pseudoscience is never more potent than when it comes backed with real credentials. Ablow’s credentials are real. But we tentatively suggest that you should beware of taking advice from him regarding anything resembling psychology or anything else for that matter.

#319: Eric Jon Phelps

No, no relation to Fred – but Eric is certainly doing his best to outcrazy his more famous namesake. Eric Jon Phelps is a sort of unholy mix of Jack Chick and Alex Jones – no, strike that; Eric Jon Phelps is crazier than either. Yes, he is. His website is here. As you can garner from his site, Phelps is most famous for his book “Vatican Assassins”. I recommend searching the webpage, since it is quite simply not possible to sum up the level of crazy in a few words. The basic idea seems to be that the pope is the guy running the Illuminati, the Thirteen Families, and therefore the world (actually, there are two – a black pope and a white pope; the black pope is the most powerful). The Jesuits are behind pretty much everything, and … Ok, here are some headlines from his webpage to give you a taster:

- “Newt Gingrich: Prince Consort of the Knights of Malta, Spellman’s Killers of JFK”

- “Israel Seizes 50 Tons of Weapons from Iranian Ship to Supply Muslims in Gaza” (yup, read it again if you missed it) 

- “Satan and His Jesuit Superior General in Rome Make Plans for the 21st Century” (look at the evidence!)

- “Japan’s Domestic Disaster: God Using Satan’s Jesuit Vatican for Two Occult Reasons” (yes, the pope’s behind that one as well): “Caution must always be exercised when considering the reasons for what appears to be ‘natural disasters’” (… cause there might be a completely insane, supernatural one)

- “UFOs: Man-Made High Technology: Weapons Enforcing Pope’s Temporal Power” (you can’t fake this)

- “White Christian Author Exposes White Mormon Glenn Beck: New Age Heretic”. According to Phelps “White Glenn Beck is presently the most dangerous man in America” (yes, the emphasis is on “white”; Phelps has some, uh, less than politically correct views about race). Calling Beck the most dangerous man in America (the commentary was made in March 2011) may not be such a bad observation. Phelps’s reasons? Not so good.

- “Red Chinese Navy: 4,000-Ton Missile Frigate Now off the Coast of Libya” [this stems from the start of the unrest]: “As repeated by your Editor for the last ten years, America is to suffer a future Sino-Soviet-Muslim Invasion”. Don your tinfoil hats! To the Bat-zapper!

- “Majority Black Savagery Continues Unabated in Apostate Protestant White America”: Phelps “distinguishes between the Majority Savage Blacks and the Minority Civil Blacks—many of whom are my brethren in Christ Jesus,” (don’t ask) and laments the fact that when “a White man attempts to deal objectively [sic] with the topic of Majority Savage Black-on-White or Black-on-Hispanic crime, he runs the rise [sic] of being labeled a ‘hateful racist’”. Indeed. (Follow-up here)

Phelps also thinks everyone else in the looniverse, from Alex Jones to Leonard Horowitz to Jeff Rense are really Vatican agents. Daryl Bradford Smith and others, on the other hand, thinks Phelps is in on the “real” conspiracy, since he is a “Zionist promoter, Israeli diamond merchant, new ager and white separatist”. Goodness knows what would count as falsifying evidence for these people.

Phelps also defends a geocentric universe, sort of to top it all off. You can listen to Phelps debate Michael Collins Piper about who is really controlling the world here (not recommended); or read an interview with Rick Martin here (their discussion of Saddam concerns this)

Diagnosis: Time Cube insane. Eric Phelps seems to be trying to believe every false and crazy belief one could conceivably believe at the same time. This is certainly an interesting principle for building what amounts to an anti-coherent belief system. Reality be damned.

#2176: Samuel Rodriguez

One of the more powerful figures on the religious right, Samuel Rodriguez is a fundie pastor and founder and president of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference (NHCLC/CONEL), the largest Hispanic Christian Evangelical/Pentecostal organization in the world. As such, he is also a frequent advisor of lawmakers, wields a substantial influence on policy making, and has been a featured speaker in the White House and at Congressional meetings. Currently he also serves on the board of directors for the National Association of Evangelicals, is chair of The Congress of Christian Leaders, and one of the leaders of the dominionist New Apostolic Reformation (NAR).

Though frequently portrayed as a political moderate – and despite his frequent self-comparisons with MLK (a cross between Billy Graham and Martin Luther King, Jr. “with a little salsa tossed in,” according to himself) – Rodriguez is solidly wingnut. For the 2016 election he effectively endorsed Trump, for instance, claiming that his very freedom to preach the gospel would otherwise be at risk. (He has also endorsed Jared Kushner, but that’s a different story). Now, Rodriguez does indeed disagree with many fellow wingnuts on the topic of immigration when it suits him (he is on record defending Trump’s wall, however), though his professed reason is that the immigration of evangelical Christian Latinos is part of the salvation and replenishment of Christian America, which is currently under threat of secular persecution – “there is an attempt to silence the voice of Christianity, there is an attempt to silence the voice of truth, of righteousness and Biblical justice,” says Rodriguez – and a bulwark against Islam. Rodriguez was also co-founder and former vice president of the NAR-led, South Carolina-based political project The Oak Initiative, a religio-political organization with a mandate to save America from an imaginary Marxist/Leftist/Homosexual/Islamic enemy, and represented the Initiative on conference calls in preparation for Lou Engle’s rally The Call, Detroit, in 2011, the purpose of which was to help cleanse the city from the demon of Islam by engaging in “spiritual warfare” (Rodriguez resigned from the organization when media started to pay attention). As part of his “nonpartisan” outreach efforts, Rodriguez has participated in numerous religious right rallies, including the 2012 prayer-and-fasting-to-beat-Obama rally “America for Jesus”, filmed an ad for GOPfaith, and appeared for instance in a Champion the Vote’s “nonpartisan” mobilization DVD “One Nation Under God” with James Dobson, David Barton and Newt Gingrich. There is a good portrait of Rodriguez and his wingnuttery here. For anyone still in denial and who doubt Rodriguez’s wingnuttery, the NHCLC has a formal agreement to make Liberty Counsel their official legislative and policy arm, and Mat Staver is a board member of and chief legal counsel to the NHCLC. 

There is a good resource on Rodriguez’s involvement with the NAR here; Rodriguez has for instance asserted that Cindy Jacobs, who routinely claims that her prayers stop terror attacks, save the economy, prevent coups, heal medical conditions, cure insanity, and resurrect people, is “a legitimate prophet of God.”

Rodriguez is, of course, staunchly opposed to marriage equality and abortion, both of which he claims to be the work of demonic spirits: Jezebel, which pushes people into “sexual perversion”, and the spirit of Herod, which is responsible for abortion. He has also called marriage equality an assault on religious freedom because views he disagrees with threaten his religious freedom and are therefore unconstitutional. “This is not an issue of equality. This is an attempt to silence the church of Jesus Christ,” says Rodriguez, a claim  so dumb that it is quite superfluous to point out the laughable false dilemma on which it rests. (It is, of course, this kind of nonsense that for instance qualified him for participating on Rubio’s Religious Liberty advisory board.) “There’s a great probability that in our lifetime,” said Rodriguez, “that we may have to be imprisoned and suffer great persecution, prosecution, as a result of our commitment to biblical truth, to Jesus, to the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. We are there, my friend,” because America is currently engaged in modern-day Baal worship. “That’s not hyperbole,” Rodriguez asserted, which is technically correct: it isn’t hyperbole; it’s pure delusional fantasy. His evidence is that “many Christians have had conversations” about this very topic, which is not evidence. Since he is deeply confused about the difference between disagreeing with him – or making policy decisions he doesn’t approve of – and violating his religious rights, it is little wonder that he feels persecuted or thinks that marriage equality will lead to anti-Christian discrimination and hate speech laws. It doesn’t make the idea less silly, however.

Rodriguez also promotes right-wing positions on economics and government regulation, and has for instance taken part in a “prayercast” to ask God to defeat the ACA, signing onto declarations that oppose progressive taxation and embraced rhetoric about people being “enslaved” by government and “uber-entitlements.” He has promoted the LIBRE Initiative, saying that it is anti-Christian and anti-American to “punish success”, and embraces a prosperity gospel view of wealth. 

Rodriguez is also the author of e.g. Be Light and Agenda of the Lamb, and executive producer for the 20th Century Fox motion picture The Impossible: The Miraculous Story of a Mother’s Faith and Her Child’s Resurrection.

There is a good Samuel Rodriguez resource here.

Diagnosis: Rightwing fundie extremist. He claims to be nonpartisan and moderate, since lies for Jesus apparently don’t count. Extremely dangerous.

#2244: Dutch Sheets

One of the central figures in the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR), Dutch Sheets is an anointed and apparently re-anointed (“with a fresh impartation of Holy Spirit”) “teaching apostle”, self-appointed prophet and hardcore dominionist. Sheets is critical of the current state of American churches, claiming that they spend too much time and effort on values, creating communities and supporting families, and too little time on the church as a legislative body – as God’s government on Earth. Sheets blames Satan for the current situation, but also King James, who ostensibly used trickery to downplay the church’s dominion over the government and legislation – “kind of like our government that is trying to sell us separation of church and state,” says Sheets. Accordingly, Sheets sees it as part of his role to “raise up an army” willing to make a real effort to help the church’s in their attempt “to take over everything and rule the earth completely for the Lord,” while mocking those “little sheepies” focusing on the caring and pastoral work of the church. 

And according to Sheets’s own “prophetic visions”, Jesus has called upon Christians to take over government: “Through my recent re-commissioning […] and other prophetic revelation, the Lord has confirmed to me that the door to the governmental arena – and to Washington DC, specifically – is again wide open.” For the 2012 election, Sheets accordingly expressed his support for Christian model and moral beacon Newt Gingrich. Before the 2018 midterms, Sheets reported that God told him to “war for this nation” and declared that “the kingdom of God is invading the United States of America.”

Sheets is also a firm believer in the powers of prayers. For instance, as Sheets sees things, his and NAR figure Chuck Pierce’s prayers during a tour of the country led to the capture of Saddam Hussein. Moreover, Sheets’s prayers have apparently been a primary cause of various Supreme Court vacancies. “God had assigned me to pray for the Supreme Court” and told Sheets that “the greatest stronghold of the enemy ruling our nation was in the Supreme Court” for “there is no gate that has allowed more evil to enter our nation than the Supreme Court.” Meanwhile Democrats opposed Kavanaugh because “they hate President Trump because he is helping turn around the Antichrist agenda they love.” At present, Sheets is praying for God to kill more Supreme Court judges so that Trump can fill the vacancies.

Like most other NPR prophets, Sheets’s main strategy to achieve his political goals is, as suggested, prayers, including holding prayer rallies and arranging conferences to “save America”, with names like the “Appeal to Heaven Conference” (because “America’s narcissistic independence from her Creator has left us spiritually and morally bankrupt”).

Sheets also has called President Obama a “Muslim president” and said his election is bringing the judgment of God, and that “God has now turned us over to our enemies for a season”. Prior to the 2012 election, he proclaimed that the “systems of anti-Christ” that have bound the nation would be broken – he was accordingly disappointed with what actually happened, and promptly declared that God’s wholesale judgment was about to rain down on this nation because “God has put up with all of the mocking He intends to from Barack Obama”. (As for the “mocking”: “who could ever forget the mocking spirit demonstrated by our president when he decorated the White House with rainbow colors”). The election of Trump in 2016, meanwhile, was a miracle and a sign of God’s mercy, and Sheets has a warning for those who – due to the influence of evil spirits, of course – resist Trump: “You will fail! … The Ekklesia will take you out. The outpouring of Holy Spirit will take you out. Angels will take you out.” (Sheets’s rhetoric tends to be a bit violent and bloodthirsty.) You see, Trump is apparently already chosen by God, who is soon going to give him visions like St. John of Patmos, he of the Revelations; Sheets is “confident” that this will happen because a friend of his had a dream before the 2016 election in which she saw Trump sitting in a hotel room, weeping as he read the Bible. Dreams purportedly had by unnamed friends are apparently a major source of information on the state of the world for Sheets.

America is facing divine punishment for other sins, too: for instance, God will beat up America for

the promotion of “homosexuality, abortion and socialism” and the “toleration of immorality and perversion” as well. No, Sheets was not happy with the Supreme Court ruling on marriage equality, which he asserted would result “in the breakdown of families, along with the devastating effect this will have on children.” (Exactlyhowallowing homosexuals to marry will lead to families breaking down is left a bit unclear, of course. As always.)

Dutch’s brother Tim Sheets is also heavily involved in the NAR. Tim Sheets is apparently an expert on angels, and has led fundies in prayers for God and his angels to take out the deep state. And like his brother, Tim Sheets regularly talks with God, though God seems to be saying some very strange things to him.

There is a decent Dutch Sheets resource here.

Diagnosis: So frenzied by bigotry and bloodthirst that it is often difficult for him to stay coherent. One of the most evil people in the NAR, which is, again, one of the most thoroughly evil organizations in the Western world. Extremely dangerous.