Pro-Trump conservative Evangelical leader Franklin Graham sat down with Axios co-founder Mike Allen and served up several hypocritical takes on topics ranging from former President Donald Trump to vaccines to the media.
Perhaps the greatest falsehood was a short exchange on the coronavirus vaccine.
Numerous reports for months make clear conservative Evangelicals are the largest group of Americans refusing to get the vaccine, and given that one in four Americans are evangelical, that alone will make it hard for the U.S. to reach herd immunity.
“Evangelical resistance to the COVID-19 vaccine presents a public health challenge,” NPR reported April 5.
A New York Times headline that same day made the problem ever clearer: “Millions of white evangelicals do not intend to get vaccinated.”
One month earlier an AP/NORC poll found “40% of white evangelical Protestants said they likely won’t get vaccinated.”
According the Graham (who has been encouraging evangelicals to get the shot) evangelicals aren’t the problem.
“Over the last four years as you supported President Trump you saw everything being more politicized, polarized, like do you feel like some of this is on your doorstep?” Axios’s Mike Allen posited in the interview (below.)
“No,” Graham replied. “I appreciate what the President did for our country.”
“Because a lot of his followers,” Allen continued, “a lot of Christians, a lot of evangelical Christians do not believe science, the truth, the press.”
“Many accept vaccines,” Graham said, “Many don’t. And it’s not an evangelical thing,” he claimed, which is false.
Allen also asked Graham about how Trump treated the press.
“Rally after rally, President Trump would say, ‘don’t believe them,’ pointing to the cameras, like, ‘don’t believe the press, don’t believe anyone but me.'”
“And I would have never had said that,” Graham claimed. “And I’ll think this, this is hurting. I think you’ve built a wall. I think it created animosity when it shouldn’t have. Just because somebody disagrees with you, doesn’t mean they’re your enemy.”
“You think it was a mistake for President Trump to demonize the press?” Allen asked point blank.
“No question about it,” Graham replied (video below.)
Here’s Graham doing the exact same thing Trump did, and to help advance Trump’s agenda (all quotes from Graham’s Twitter account):
“I’ve never seen hatred like we’re seeing in our nation today. The mainstream media is so biased & will do whatever they can to attack @POTUS Trump. He has done more for our country in 4 yrs than any president in my lifetime, but that doesn’t matter to agenda-driven media.” Oct. 16, 2020
“Much of the media has lost it. There’s no respect, no honor. What happened to professionalism & to journalists reporting the facts w/no personal agenda?” Dec. 7, 2018
“Never before has there been such a level of hatred as we have seen for Donald Trump from the Democrats & liberal media. Why? It may be because he hasn’t bowed down to them.” Jan. 13, 2020
“The news media are so vicious & relentless in their fault finding & their attacks on the President. It’s just sickening.” Dec. 26, 2018
“I lay much of the blame at the feet of the media for feeding the divisions & pushing their own agendas rather than accurately researching & reporting the news.” Jan. 23, 2019
“For once, I agree with House @SpeakerPelosi—our country is in a constitutional crisis. However, I strongly disagree with her on the cause. I put the blame at her feet & those in the Democratic Party who follow her, along with many in the media. May 10, 2019
“The Mueller report is in—no evidence of collusion. The sad thing is, the US lost 2 years & millions of dollars on investigations as @POTUS @realDonaldTrump’s enemies spouted lies. The liberal media was also culpable in this nightmare.” Mar. 24, 2019
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