The Christian Right has had a stranglehold on the Republican Party ever since President Ronald Reagan allied himself with the Rev. Jerry Falwell and the Christian Broadcasting Network’s Pat Robertson in the early 1980s, and in 2022, some of former President Donald Trump’s strongest supporters are far-right white evangelicals. Those evangelicals, according to NPR’s John Burnett, believe that Trump is still their best chance to keep their movement alive.
One of the far-right evangelicals Burnett interviewed was Jim Willis, who attends the Patriot Church in Tennessee.
Clemetson, who attended Trump’s “Stop the Steal” rally that day, told NPR, “The only insurrection that happened on January 6 was by the agent provocateurs, paid actors, and corrupt police and FBI.”
Clemetson described the Patriot Church as a “Trump church,” adding, “Donald Trump represented what we stand for as a nation. You go to flyover country and people have good moral values. They love the Lord and they want the best for the country. And that’s what Donald Trump tapped into. That’s what he represented.”