Roger Stone speaks during a press conference for The America Project held at Beths Burger Bar across the street from the CPAC Conservative Political Action Conference on Friday, February 25, 2022 in Orlando, FL. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images)
Roger Stone has been in and out of Donald Trump’s orbit for more than four decades. But since Trump switched his three years in prison to lie to federal investigators, the self-proclaimed specialist in political “dirty tricks” had been preaching the gospel of Trumpism to the former president’s most fervent religious supporters.
“I’m a soldier in the Lord’s army,” Stone, who has said he converted to Christianity shortly after his 2019 conviction, announced last Friday at a Pastors for Trump meeting at the former president’s Doral compound in Miami.
The meeting was organized by a failed candidate for the United States Senate from Oklahoma and a couple from Missouri named David and Stacy Whited, who have done it training in multilevel marketing and host a podcast called The conservatives of the step.
The 2024 election, Stone said, will be “a struggle between light and darkness … a struggle between good and evil … an epic struggle between the godly and the ungodly.”
Stone spoke alongside Michael Flynn, Trump’s former national security adviser, as well as Stacy Whited, who promised the crowd that Trump will be re-elected president in 2024.
Stone and Flynn use a more religious and apocalyptic rhetoric
Retired U.S. Army Gen. Michael Flynn delivers a speech to a barn full of supporters during a campaign event for U.S. Senate candidate Josh Mandel on April 21, 2022 at Mapleside Farms in Brunswick, Ohio . (Dustin Franz/Getty Images)
Like FlynnStone has been using more explicitly religious language in recent years, particularly when attending events on the Reawaken America tour that mix the services of the evangelical church with speeches promoting Qanon conspiracy theories and Trumpism.
The events combine a devotion to Trump with an apocalyptic religious view of politics. Flynn and Stone have, over the past two years, joined pastors and podcasters from a particular strand of American evangelicalism in calling their political opponents evil and even demonic.
“This is a war we’re in, this is a great spiritual war,” Flynn he said last year, with Stone behind him. “I mean people like Nancy Pelosi, she’s a demon.”
Stone has also added a religious component to the kind of anti-establishment political rhetoric he has used for years. “Both parties are dominated by the neoconservatives, by the globalists, by those who have turned away from the Lord,” he said. he said last year.
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Stone has become a regular guest on an Internet program called Elijah Streams, which is for those who believe in modern-day prophets and seers. Last year Stone he told the show’s host that a “satanic portal” was physically “right above the White House,” a claim he has reiterated in appearances with other right-wing Christians.
What is Stone doing?
Roger Stone greets the crowd before former US President Donald Trump and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) take the stage to lead a rally at the Miami-Dade County Fair and Exposition on Nov. 6, 2022 in Miami, Florida. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
Matthew D. Taylor has studied the world of “independent charismatic” evangelicals, the specific stream of Christianity that Stone and Flynn are catering to with their political and religious rhetoric. Taylor is the Protestant Scholar at the Institute for Islamic, Christian, and Jewish Studies in Baltimore, and is publish a book about these believers and their links to the January 6, 2021 assault on the United States Capitol.
Taylor believes that Stone and Flynn “seek to have a much more direct influence in this world, not mediated by pastors and prophets and rabbis, but through their own charismatic language.”
“My sense is [Stone] has recognized the importance of this sector of Christianity to Trump’s radicalized base,” Taylor told Yahoo News. “I think he’s been cultivating his own ability to speak to this world and his own credibility in it, with the hope that it would have some influence.”
Stone has long been interested in bypassing traditional media to reach people directly. Taylor’s theory is that he is also trying to turn to established authorities within the charismatic evangelical world for more influence. Stone did not respond to a request for comment.
The danger of dehumanizing rhetoric
Attendees pray together before President Donald Trump addresses the crowd at King Jesus International Ministry during an “Evangelicals for Trump” rally in Miami, Florida, Friday, Jan. 3, 2020. (Scott McIntyre/For The Washington Post via Getty Images)
Trump’s grip on evangelicals has shown some signs of slipping. Numerous leaders have done so so far refused to support him.
So these efforts by Stone and Flynn to hold on to the more staunch base of committed Christian Trumpists make political sense. But the rhetoric of violent spiritual warfare that permeates this world has already played a role in provoking real-world political violence once on Jan. 6, Taylor argued in his “Charismatic Revival Fury Podcast Series.
And the violent rhetoric has not subsided. Stone often appears on the Elijah Streams show alongside a man named Robin D. Bullock, a full-length leather jacket wearing religious leader from Alabama. who claims he has “gone to heaven…a few times” and “saw God create the world once.”
Bullock can be controversial among other charismatic evangelicals, but his YouTube channel has 201,000 subscribers. Stone called Bullock a ‘good friend’ this week. And in comments to the Whiteds last year, Bullock said the FBI raid on Trump’s Mar-A-Lago resort had “triggered the day of vengeance.” described in the biblical book of Isaiah.
“I will tread them down in my anger and trample them down in my fury, and their blood will be sprinkled on my garments.” Bullock said, reading the passage. “Yes!” exclaimed a smiling Stacy Whited.
Taylor worried that this continuous dehumanization of opponents by comparing them to demons and violent spiritual rhetoric that sometimes spills over into real clues. physical violence or “sudden death” predictions among Trump opponents, it is creating a “Early storm surge forecast for next January 6”.
