When Republican vice presidential hopeful J.D. Vance appeared at a Christian conservative town hall in Monroeville, Penn., hosted by controversial right-wing preacher Lance Wallnau on September 28, PBS ran a full story two days later on the threat of “Christian Nationalism” and by implication, of Vance himself.

Never mind that Vance was not actually interviewed by Wallnau, who didn’t even speak to Vance at the gathering, according to the Washington Post (another pastor handled it). But the PBS NewsHour was doing some guilt by association, with anchor Geoff Bennett hosting scholar Matthew Taylor on September 30 for “The significance of Vance’s appearance at event hosted by far-right Christian nationalist.”  

Geoff Bennett: We're going to take a closer look now at the significance of Republican vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance's weekend appearance at a town hall event organized by top Christian nationalist leaders. The event's host, Lance Wallnau, is a leading figure in what's called the New Apostolic Reformation. That's a far right Christian nationalist movement that wants to erase the separation between church and state and increasingly intersects with the Trump campaign….

Taylor described Wallnau as “a Christian nationalist leader. I would even go so far as to call him a Christian supremacist leader, kind of a hard-line form of Christian nationalism….this is a movement that is already steeped in a rhetoric of violence….”

Two days earlier, PBS News Weekend anchor John Yang noted Vance had “participated in a town hall hosted by Lance Wallnau, a controversial evangelical leader. He claims to be a prophet, and he defended the January 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol.”

Why is this significant now?

Because whatever one thinks of preacher Wallnau’s arcane theology and controversial political statements (the Associated Press hyperventilated over Wallnau calling Kamala Harris a “Jezebel spirit,” in a story syndicated by PBS on its own website), it pales next to Rev. Al Sharpton’s long history of racial arson, both metaphorical and literal, before becoming an anchor on left-wing MSNBC.

Yet Sharpton, an actual purveyor of "a rhetoric of violence,” interviewed Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris on his Sunday afternoon MSNBC program PoliticsNation. (Hardly a reach toward undecided centrists for Harris there.)

Sharpton’s long list of offenses against decency include calling Jews "diamond merchants" during the racial disturbance in Crown Heights in 1991. In Harlem in 1995, Sharpton cursed the white Jewish owner of Freddy's Fashion Mart in Harlem as a "white interloper" in a protest that escalated when a protester entered the store, shot four employees and set the building on fire, killing seven employees. He has defended the anti-Semites Louis Farrakhan and Leonard Jeffries.

But PBS made no attempt at guilt by association by linking Harris to Sharpton’s radical past. And unlike Wallnau, who didn’t even speak to Vance, Sharpton conducted a 15-minute interview with Harris (not before initially mispronouncing Harris’s first name, which the media is trying to make a hate crime).

Sunday’s PBS News Weekend (likely recorded early in the day) didn’t get to Harris’ appearance on Sharpton’s show, while Monday’s PBS News Hour ran a clip of Harris and Sharpton in a story from the campaign trail. But reporter Laura Barron-Lopez, in full anti-Trump moralizing mood, said nothing about any potential controversy regarding Harris speaking directly about topics like Israel to a New York City minister-activist made infamous for anti-Jewish ranting. Barron-Lopez merely highlighted VP Harris’s tedious warnings about the danger posed by Donald Trump.

Laura Barron-Lopez: At the same rally, Donald Trump used an expletive when talking about Vice President Harris. In an MSNBC interview with Al Sharpton, Harris said the American people deserve better.  

An 18-second clip of Harris followed to conclude the segment.

Kamala Harris: And what you see in my opponent, a former president of the United States, really is -- it demeans the office. And I have said, and I'm very clear about this, Donald Trump should never again stand behind the seal of the president of the United States. He has not earned the right.

Even while sitting across from a minister and racial arsonist, the only controversy PBS could see came from Donald Trump.

These segments were brought to you in part by Consumer Cellular.

An archive transcript is available, click “Expand.”

PBS News Hour

9/30/24

Anchor Geoff Bennett: We're going to take a closer look now at the significance of Republican vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance's weekend appearance at a town hall event organized by top Christian nationalist leaders. The event's host, Lance Wallnau, is a leading figure in what's called the New Apostolic Reformation. That's a far right Christian nationalist movement that wants to erase the separation between church and state and increasingly intersects with the Trump campaign. We're joined now by Matthew Taylor, senior scholar at the educational nonprofit Institute for Islamic, Christian, and Jewish Studies. His book out tomorrow is "The Violent Take It by Force: The Christian Movement That Is Threatening Our Democracy." Thanks for being here.

Matthew Taylor, Author, "The Violent Take It by Force: The Christian Movement That Is Threatening Our Democracy": Thank you for having me, Geoff.

Geoff Bennett: So who is Lance Wallnau, and how does his brand of Christian nationalism differ from the white evangelical Christianity that's been the power base of the GOP for decades?

Matthew Taylor: Lance Wallnau is a Christian nationalist leader. I would even go so far as to call him a Christian supremacist leader, kind of a hard-line form of Christian nationalism. He's a Pentecostal charismatic minister. He has various titles that attach to him. He sometimes will call himself an apostle, sometimes a prophet, sometimes an evangelist. He's a business consultant. He came up in this movement called the New Apostolic Reformation, which is really the focus of my book. And the New Apostolic Reformation was a set of leadership networks that were established by Wallnau's mentor, C. Peter Wagner, in the late 1990s and early 2000s. And they became really the backbone of the movement of Christian Trumpism, some of the first leaders to endorse Donald Trump, including Wallnau, in 2015, before any of the primaries really got started. And they have been some of the most effective Christian propagandists for Donald Trump, offering prophecies, modern prophecies, to backstop and to bolster Donald Trump's case to Christians.

....

Matthew Taylor: Well, this is a movement that is already steeped in a rhetoric of violence. Now, they will often frame it and say, this is about spiritual violence. We're talking about battling back demons, battling back Satan. But they're also pointing at real people. Lance Wallnau has said that Kamala Harris is a manifestation of demons, that you can't even listen to her because it's just demons speaking through her. He accused her of using witchcraft to present herself in an appealing way in the most recent debate.