This rightwing evangelical was one of Trump’s biggest backers. Why isn’t he talking about the midterms?

Lance Wallnau, an evangelist who was among the first prominent religious conservatives to endorse Donald Trump and who helped shape Christian nationalist strategy inside the Maga movement, said nothing about the midterm elections at a recent private weekend for paying supporters near Dallas-Fort Worth, even though voting was little more than three weeks off. Instead, over three sessions, he held up El Salvador's prison system and its president, Nayib Bukele, as models, and praised Hungary, Slovakia and Poland, according to The Guardian.

He also pushed local activism, applauding Southlake, Texas, churchgoers who captured their school board and telling residents angry about an Irving mosque to unseat the city council. Wallnau, 70, admitted his audience skews old and that the movement struggles to attract young people. Reflecting on the killing of Charlie Kirk, he cast himself as the figure who must locate a successor: "I got to find that guy."

Publicly he still lauds Trump and Republican candidates, and he is tied to Ziklag, a secretive Texas group whose 2024 operations targeted turnout and church mobilization. Unlike 2024, when his Courage Tour visited swing states, he has not repeated it.

Summarized by PolitiKool from The Guardian’s reporting. Read the full story at The Guardian →