Cole Tomas Allen, Attempted Assassin, Is A Christian
Donald Trump claimed that attempted assassin Cole Tomas Allen hates Christianity.
The opposite is true. Cole Tomas Allen is a churchgoing Christian who used Christian theology to justify his violence.
Full Transcript:
Yesterday I put out an episode of this podcast on a Saturday because there was some news that I thought was worth putting out on a weekend. It's not something that anyone normally would do. Today, there is even more important news, specifically a piece of misinformation that is being spread by Donald Trump in the name of Christianity.
Last night, there was an attempted assassination.
Not a very good one, but an attempted assassination of Donald Trump.
This is an example of why political violence is absolutely a terrible idea.
We can talk about that morally, but even just tactically, strategically, it's a stupid idea, because the intended victims of your violence.
They typically escape because they're people in power. They have professional security all around them, and then they go ahead and they use this violence to extend their power, and to distort the discussion of ideas, to bend things their way.
It makes extreme abusive politicians even more extreme and more abusive.
So, the thing is that shortly after the assassination attempt.
Donald Trump came on in front of reporters and he said, quote, when you read his manifesto, he hates Christians, unquote, Donald Trump was claiming that Cole Thomas Allen, the would be assassin, is a rabid anti-Christian, that he is a non-Christian, and that his assassination attempt was motivated by a hatred for Christianity.
I want to make it clear, that is absolutely false.
The New York Post has obtained a copy of that manifesto and has put it online.
I encourage you to go read it. I don't usually encourage people to go read anything from the New York Post because it's just a terrible newspaper that has some really low quality writing and thinking.
But they have obtained this document, and it's important for you to read it. What I want you to do is go and look and see if you can find anything anti-Christian in that manifesto.
I'm telling you, you won't, and here's the reason: Cole Thomas Allen, the attempted assassin, is himself a Christian.
In his manifesto, he refers to his church family - the Christian church that he belongs to. Investigators are already finding that when he was at school at Cal Tech, where he got a master's degree in computer science of some kind. He was a member of the Caltech Christian fellowship.
There is nothing in that manifesto that says anything negative about Christianity.
In fact, the manifesto cites Christian theology as a justification for violence, but Donald Trump is trying to convince people that this assassin was a non-Christian, attacking Donald Trump because he is a Christian, and Donald Trump is a Christian, that's true.
Donald Trump is lying, saying that there is something anti-Christian in this manifesto, in order to justify new persecution of non-Christian Americans by his Christian, nationalist, fascist government.
Nobody can predict the future, but the signs are looking pretty clear. Watch out, because things are about to get pretty ugly.