With just days remaining before voters start casting their primary ballots, the two candidates in a head-to-head battle for the Republican nomination for Colorado governor didn’t so much as acknowledge each other in separate appearances onstage at a conservative conference in Aurora on Saturday.
Far-right conspiracy theories
Lopez and Ganahl were preceded on stage by Frank Gaffney, a far-right activist long criticized for Islamophobic and anti-immigrant rhetoric, who warned summit attendees of the threat posed by “the enemy within our own country” — people and organizations that he said are agents of the Chinese Communist Party.
In another speech earlier Saturday, Peter Kerr, a Colorado Christian University business and marketing professor, compared current events to the fall of the Roman Empire, accusing the Biden “regime” of plotting to undermine the American financial system to aid China.
Exhibitors at the summit included The Epoch Times, a far-right newspaper described by the New York Times as a “global-scale misinformation machine,” and New Tang Dynasty Television. Through its print and digital media network, The Epoch Times has become a leading purveyor of a wide range of right-wing misinformation and conspiracy theories, including baseless claims of widespread fraud in the 2020 presidential election.
Responding to recent media coverage of the rising influence of Christian nationalism in the GOP, Ellis said she rejected the label, but nonetheless insisted that the Founders intended the U.S. to be a “Christian nation.”
“We have to answer that question of ‘Christian nationalist’ by saying, ‘Of course I’m a Christian. Of course I’m a nationalist’ said Ellis.