Marjorie Taylor Greene joins Michael Knowles to discuss her viral statements about Christian Nationalism. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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| I made the mistake of reading CNN a couple of days ago, and I read a very long piece attacking Christian nationalism, which is apparently on the rise in America. | |
| And then I made another mistake. | |
| I turned over to Twitter. | |
| That's never a smart thing to do. | |
| And on Twitter, I see the same person trending for two different reasons. | |
| One of the trends was Christian nationalism. | |
| The other one was, she's a Nazi. | |
| And the person trending was Republican Congressman Marjorie Taylor Greene. | |
| So I said, well, that doesn't sound right to me. | |
| A little skeptical of those trends. | |
| So I thought we should invite her on to hear straight from her what she means by all these things. | |
| Congresswoman Greene, thank you so much for coming on. | |
| Thanks for having me on, Michael. | |
| So first question, Twitter is forcing me to ask this. | |
| Are you now, or have you ever been, a Nazi, a National Socialist? | |
| No. | |
| Never. | |
| I'm relieved to hear that. | |
| Yeah, apparently they can label you things you're not and lie about you and smear your character on Twitter, and they think that's perfectly okay. | |
| And this is what they have done to me ever since I became a member of Congress. | |
| And I'm really tired of it. | |
| I am. | |
| It hurts me. | |
| It hurts my family. | |
| It hurts my friends and it angers them. | |
| It also upsets people in my district because they share the same faith that I have. | |
| I'm a Christian. | |
| And they also love our country just like I do. | |
| But no, I think the Nazis did horrible things. | |
| Who can identify with that? | |
| But that's just the name and the label That the godless left uses to try to smear someone's character. | |
| And so when they're, you know, they call everyone a Nazi. | |
| Anyone to the right of Hillary Clinton they call a Nazi. | |
| But when they're going after you, they've been doing it more specifically. | |
| They've been going after you for the issue of Christian nationalism. | |
| And this is the, you know, scare phrase du jour. | |
| So forget what CNN says about Christian nationalism. | |
| What do you say Christian nationalism is? | |
| Well, I'm a Christian. | |
| You know, I have my full faith in God and Jesus is my Savior. | |
| I'm not perfect. | |
| I'm definitely a sinner. | |
| I know that for sure. | |
| And that's why I put my faith in the Son of God who died on a Roman cross so that my sins could be forgiven. | |
| And that's the profession of my faith. | |
| I also believe that Jesus is the Son of God and I believe the words in the Bible. | |
| That's what being a Christian is. | |
| Jesus' commandment, God's commandment to us is to love God first and then love people like we love ourselves and love Him and like He loves people. | |
| So I don't see how this is a scary thing. | |
| It's definitely not racist. | |
| People includes all people, even the ones we don't like. | |
| That doesn't mean that we back down and cave into their demands or what they want us to do, because I believe a lot of the things the left want are extremely wrong and sinful. | |
| So being a Christian isn't a bad thing. | |
| It actually is a really good thing for everyone. | |
| Being a nationalist means I just love my country. | |
| I love America. | |
| I'm proud to be an American. | |
| I'm elected by the people in Georgia's 14th district, and I'm very grateful and humbled to serve and represent them here in Congress. | |
| But it also means that I believe that America's hard-earned tax dollars should be used for America and our interests, such as securing our border, making sure that our economy is strong, that our businesses are put forth. | |
| First, not other businesses and other countries. | |
| I care about our kids. | |
| I care about our kids a lot. | |
| I care about our kids so much that I believe it's imperative that we protect them from the godless left and their plans to lie to the kids, confusing them about gender, drag queens in schools, CRT, racist teaching and ideologies. | |
| And I care about our kids' future, and that means that I think That our government should be working for America's interests first. | |
| So I don't see how that's a bad thing. | |
| And actually, Michael, most Americans feel this way. | |
| Most Americans care about our country and are tired of money going over to foreign countries and never-ending foreign wars and other countries' borders being cared about and ours being completely neglected. | |
| So these aren't radical issues. | |
| As a matter of fact, these are pretty common issues. | |
| Well, the way you're describing it, I think that pretty much everybody in America could have used that term Christian nationalist until recent, certainly until the 1960s, probably until later. | |
| So then I guess the question, that's a good description of Christianity, good description of nationalism. | |
| Then the question that CNN especially is raising and that the left seems to be running on in the midterms is... | |
| What is the relationship between the two? | |
| Between the Christianity and the nationalism, and what does it mean for everybody else? | |
| Well, what that means is if the Republican Party were really to strive hard for those two ideas or ideologies, or what's a better word? | |
| Identity. | |
| Let's say that that's what the Republican Party really cared about. | |
| That means that we would care about traditional family values. | |
| We would care about marriage. | |
| We would care about children. | |
| We would care about doing things that serve families. | |
| That means we would also care about people that are neglected, homeless people, people that are addicted to drugs. | |
| People that are being affected by the out-of-control crime. | |
| We would care about funding law enforcement and making sure that prosecutions happen, not just allowing police officers to try to make arrests, but yet these people never get prosecuted like Antifa gets off. | |
| People can shoplift up to $900 a day in California with no accountability. | |
| It means we would care about truth. | |
| It means we would care about holding our government accountable. | |
| It means that we would actually be serving and caring for others and it doesn't put a race on that. | |
| It doesn't put an identity on that. | |
| It doesn't put anyone first or second or last even. | |
| It just means that we will care for Americans, care for people here. | |
| It also means we would do things like secure our border That would stop the deadly flow of fentanyl coming across. | |
| That would also stop the human trafficking that is very real and happening every single day. | |
| It would also stop American cities and towns all over the country from being overrun by people who broke the law to come in our country. | |
| These are all good things. | |
| It means that we will take care of one another and love one another. | |
| And then when you combine that with being a nationalist, that means that we will stop sending our hard-earned tax dollars to countries that don't deserve it, to dictators. | |
| It means that we would stop sending our jobs overseas and instead would have policies that would help our American companies right here. | |
| That means we would revitalize small-town America everywhere. | |
| Because it's small-town America that's really suffered from America last policies and the policies that took God and prayer out of schools and has shunned people and shamed them for professing their faith or being proud to pray on a football field or anywhere in the classroom. | |
| It means that we would actually come together as a nation instead of be divided. | |
| So I don't see how this is a bad thing, but it's very threatening to the left because it will truly put an end to the terrible things that they're doing to our country, especially to our kids. | |
| I agree. | |
| I think this is the threat to the left, and I have a little bit of a theory as to why, which we could get to maybe a little bit later. | |
| But something you hit on here is so important, because it seems to me the biggest objection to Christian nationalism coming from the left right now is that... | |
| Well, what about people who aren't Christian? | |
| I guess if you're not a nationalist, if you don't love America, you're not a patriot, then never mind you. | |
| But what about people, you know, plenty of people who aren't Christians, Jews, Muslims, lots of agnostics or nuns, not talking about Catholic religious sisters, but the nuns, N-O-N-E-S. They don't really buy into religion at all, or at least they don't think that they don't. | |
| So in a Christian nationalist-informed political order, what about all those people? | |
| Those people are not left out at all. | |
| As a matter of fact, they're equal. | |
| Because as Christians, we're commanded to love others as we love ourselves. | |
| And there's not an identity on that. | |
| We're to love others. | |
| And if anything, that's not a bad thing. | |
| That's a good thing. | |
| So it doesn't leave anyone out. | |
| It doesn't reject anyone. | |
| As a matter of fact, it makes things A lot better for all. | |
| And we could argue deeper and compare different countries and different religions. | |
| I mean, we know what it's like in Islamic controlled countries where Sharia law is the law of the land. | |
| That's a very strict law and there's no room for Jewish people or Christians or anyone that is not a Muslim. | |
| That's actually not a good thing. | |
| They have laws about that and that's where we see severe persecutions. | |
| Look at countries like China, which is a completely godless country. | |
| Well, actually, the government is the god, right? | |
| There's terrible persecutions that happen there in China, especially to Christians and Muslims and people that are not obedient to the Chinese Communist Party and the government controlling everything. | |
| So we could compare different countries and their different way of doing things or their different religions. | |
| But in America, we were founded by very strong Christians. | |
| These were men of faith, and it was their faith that drove them to write the Declaration of Independence and to sacrifice their lives, their families, and their fortunes so that we could all have freedoms. | |
| One of the greatest things that we believe as Christians is there's no greater love than this, and that is to lay down your life For another. | |
| And that's the type of people we are being Christians. | |
| So the left is extremely threatened by an idea of Christian nationalism because they know they cannot win. | |
| They cannot beat it. | |
| It defies everything that they are. | |
| And it ultimately comes down to some very key important things, Michael. | |
| It's the fact that we refuse to bow and give in On God's creation, which is God created us male and female, and in His image He created us. | |
| That's a fundamental truth. | |
| The other truth is this, is that God created life in the womb, and being pro-life is not hateful towards women. | |
| It's actually loving towards women, and it's protecting life. | |
| So being a Christian is believing those things and wanting to make Just to make society and life much better for everyone, as well as putting our country first. | |
| And I believe we need to do that. | |
| We haven't put our country first in decades, a very, very long time. | |
| And our country is crumbling. | |
| As a matter of fact, I don't know how we're still making it. | |
| You know, we have a government that is, the Democrats and a lot of my Republican colleagues are driving hard into this war in Ukraine. | |
| They're fighting a proxy war with Russia. | |
| And Russia's a nuclear country. | |
| And this is hurting the entire world. | |
| It's creating food famines. | |
| It's driving inflation that already existed from the out of control policies here in Washington. | |
| It's also driving the energy prices and it's strengthening Russia. | |
| It's not hurting them while they're making deals with other countries like India, Saudi Arabia, China and so forth. | |
| But this is the kind of America last policies that come from the establishment or we can call it the uniparty here in Washington that serves Americans. | |
| Not at all. | |
| It serves us last. | |
| It puts Americans last. | |
| And people are sick and tired of it. | |
| So this isn't a threat. | |
| It may be a threat to globalism, but it's the greatest thing that could happen for our country. | |
| This, I think, is really why the left is so hyper-focused on making a boogeyman out of Christian nationalism right now. | |
| What is the opposite of nationalism? | |
| The opposite of nationalism in our current world political order is globalism. | |
| And what is the opposite of leftism? | |
| Well, the opposite of leftism is Christianity. | |
| The very term, the left, as we think about it, comes from the French Revolution. | |
| It comes from the people who sat on the left of the National Assembly. | |
| Those were the people who opposed the church, who opposed Christianity in France. | |
| They were the leftists. | |
| They were the very first leftists. | |
| And so... | |
| The opposite of Christian nationalism, seems pretty clearly to me, is leftist globalism. | |
| And that's what they're after. | |
| That's what they've been pushing for many decades now. | |
| And so when you see such a precise threat to that, something with that very name, Christian nationalism, you could see how they would freak out and make a big stink about this and try to misinterpret it or misrepresent it. | |
| But I think you've explained it quite fully, what you mean by this term Christian nationalism, what a lot of other people mean. | |
| The other aspect of this that I'm sure you're seeing in Washington is... | |
| If you're afraid of a Christian country, just wait until you see a non-Christian country. | |
| Absolutely. | |
| Everybody seems to have some kind of religion. | |
| The idea that we're transgendering eight-year-olds now and pretending that the soul has nothing to do with the body and a toddler should go to Drag Queen Story Hour. | |
| These are moral and religious claims. | |
| They just ain't Christian. | |
| And I tell you, if you offer me those two things, the Drag Queen Story Hour for two-year-olds or a Christian society... | |
| I think everybody, really regardless of your background or even your particular religious practice, you're going to choose the Christian society, right? | |
| Oh, of course they will, because let's look at what the left is doing, and I call them the godless left, because they are godless. | |
| Any group of people, any kind of movement, any kind of political order that believes in using our tax dollars, and they've done this through grants, Using Americans' hard-earned tax dollars to perform mastectomies, to castrate teenage boys or younger, to provide testosterone treatment for girls as young as eight years old. | |
| This is evil. | |
| It's completely evil. | |
| Children need to be protected. | |
| They need to be allowed to grow up. | |
| They don't need to be brainwashed into these type of lies. | |
| That is so evil. | |
| Any type of political movement or group That is constantly lying to women and trying to tell them that killing the unborn baby in their womb is women's health care. | |
| It's such an evil lie. | |
| Telling them that they should pursue a career where they end up childless later on in life and maybe never get married. | |
| That is so awful. | |
| That is destructive. | |
| But let's look at them even further. | |
| This is the same group of people. | |
| The Democrats or the left. | |
| We'll just go with the left. | |
| That forced everyone to take a vaccine, forced everyone to be masked, forced everyone to stay inside, where suicides increased. | |
| Crime has gone out of control. | |
| People are taking more antidepressants and SSRIs than they ever have in history. | |
| And this isn't a party or an ideology situation. | |
| The left doesn't care about people. | |
| They don't care about people. | |
| As a matter of fact, everything they're doing is destructive. | |
| It's destructive to people. | |
| But Christian nationalism is not destructive. | |
| Not at all. | |
| In a Christian nationalist society, this is where people are cared about. | |
| They're protected. | |
| They're helped. | |
| This is where we provide shelter for the homeless. | |
| We provide food for the hungry. | |
| We provide clothes for those that don't have any. | |
| We provide skills and training for people that need to learn how to get a job. | |
| And just like women's pregnancy resource centers, this is where we provide women with help when they became pregnant and didn't plan to. | |
| This is the kind of people we are. | |
| And Christian Nationalists is not the boogeyman. | |
| It's not what they're trying to make it out to be. | |
| But it is the greatest threat. | |
| And you know what? | |
| I think we live in a time right now, Michael, where people need God more than ever. | |
| More than ever. | |
| We have young people, especially young women, that look to ideas and look at themselves in a way they never should. | |
| They don't recognize the real beauty that they have inside of them and that they are. | |
| And they strive to be something that they're not. | |
| We have young men. | |
| Men in our society Basically, last on the list. | |
| Boys are told to sit still in school and they're not appreciated for who they are. | |
| Men are told they have to wait their turn and let everyone and every other identity go first before they ever get a chance. | |
| I believe that's completely wrong. | |
| Then they try to tell men that their masculinity is toxic. | |
| I believe that is completely wrong. | |
| We're living in a time where our unique, separate identities as men and women is totally abandoned, where women, the good thing about us is we are nurturing and we are caring and we have these great roles. | |
| And then men also are leaders and are strong and women need that for men. | |
| And these great, unique identities in men and women are not appreciated anymore and not celebrated. | |
| We're living in a time where more marriages end in divorce than make it. | |
| And that's tragic. | |
| It's tragic for everyone. | |
| So yeah, Christian nationalism is probably the scariest thing that the left has ever heard of and they're going to do everything they can to lie to everyone and make it out to something it's not. | |
| Well, even just that point you mentioned, more Americans than ever on anti-depression drugs. | |
| I think the number is one in eight Americans are on the anti-depression drugs. | |
| Even among teenagers, 12 to 19 years old, it's something like one in 29. | |
| You're seeing the American life expectancy decrease now several years in a row. | |
| First time ever. | |
| And the reason for that is that you have deaths of despair, suicides, drug overdoses. | |
| So obviously, just from a descriptive point of view, the kids are not all right. | |
| People are sadder. | |
| They're in despair. | |
| And so you need some kind of hopes. | |
| Clearly, we're not going in the right direction. | |
| When you say people want God, it reminds me of that scene going all the way back to the Cold War, right toward the end of the Cold War. | |
| Pope John Paul II shows up in Poland. | |
| Poland had been under the thumb of the godless regime of the Soviet Union, Soviet communism for years. | |
| Pope John Paul II shows up to do an open-air mass to celebrate the mass. | |
| And millions of polls come out there and they chant, we want God. | |
| We want God. | |
| It's one of the most incredible sights of the 20th century. | |
| Now my question for you, before I let you go, I know I'm already keeping you late. | |
| My question for you is, you keep coming back to this religious point. | |
| And I think it's an important one. | |
| As the great political philosopher Bob Dylan said, everybody's got to serve somebody. | |
| You always have to have some kind of religious views informing your politics. | |
| All politics ultimately is theological because you're making decisions about what's good and bad and right and wrong, whether we're talking about the criminal justice system, whether we're talking about parking tickets. | |
| You're always making these moral distinctions. | |
| That's what politics is. | |
| So my question for you then is, with these rising numbers of people who are agnostic, who are leaving churches, who are leaving other religions for that matter too, it's not just Christianity, who are turning away from God, do you think that we want God is a winning political message? | |
| Or do you think that the kind of forces of secularism, atheism, despair, do you think that those are on the rise? | |
| Well, I think the message of we want God or people's yearning, yearning for God is far more than a political message. | |
| It couldn't even be defined that way because God can't be defined that way. | |
| I think it is the connection between mankind and our Creator God that can never, ever be separated. | |
| And in the dark days that we are living in, I mean, we are living in times where I know you and I both and so many people Never thought that we could see a day where everything that is right is labeled wrong, and the world is upside down, and where lies are just openly told and presented as truth. | |
| And this is such evil, and it's in evil times as this, where people yearn that connection with their Creator, our Creator, God. | |
| And it's unstoppable. | |
| It is absolutely unstoppable. | |
| And God yearns back for that relationship with us. | |
| And so my full belief is this, Michael, is if we're Christians, we are told we're a light and we are not to put a shade over it and we're not to cover it up. | |
| It's to be up on a hilltop and to be shown brightly. | |
| It doesn't mean that we're perfect and it doesn't mean that we should be judgmental of others. | |
| It doesn't mean that even that we're always right sometimes in our thinking, but it does mean that we have a duty and a commandment and we have to be obedient to what we're told to do and that is to share our faith with others, especially in times like this because people need it. | |
| People need to know that they are loved by God and that all that's happening to them now And maybe what they're seeing happen in their lives, that that's not what God intended for them, and He loves them far more than that. | |
| And He sent His son to die so that their sins could be forgiven, so that there's relationship there. | |
| And to have communion and community with one another, these are all wonderful things, and we should talk about them, and we should talk about them boldly. | |
| We should never back down off of it. | |
| We should be courageous in our faith, and we should persevere on no matter what What the godless lying left says about people like us, people like me, I'm tired of being attacked. | |
| That's why I'm just wide open about it. | |
| I'm also not going to back down. | |
| I'm attacked every day because I say, no, there's only two genders. | |
| I'm attacked in my office building. | |
| They try to say it's a hate crime for me to say stuff like that. | |
| Well, I believe it's a hate crime what they're doing is lying about gender and what they're doing to children. | |
| Those are hate crimes. | |
| I believe it's fundamental for us to be loving and kind to one another, but it's also extremely important to stop allowing the lines to be blurred. | |
| Truth is truth, and we have to... | |
| We have to fight for it and hold on to it. | |
| I like your observation. | |
| I mean, this is something that Christian thinkers have known, but even non-Christian thinkers have understood that man has a natural longing for God. | |
| That is true in all places, at all times, throughout all of history. | |
| And then there is a kind of political implication to this too, which is for most, the vast majority of American history, we have Viewed politics through a Christian lens, through the lens of a Christian moral framework, through the lens of Christianity broadly, going back all the way to the Pilgrims on the Mayflower and all the way up until very recent decades. | |
| In recent decades, there has been a concerted effort by leftist radicals to upend all of that. | |
| And if you judge the tree by its fruit, you look at the fruit of what that cultural revolution has caused, people are not flourishing in the way they once were. | |
| People are more miserable. | |
| People are more... | |
| Thank you, Michael. |