The Christian Radio Network Working To Reelect Trump
As President Donald Trump trails in polls before the presidential election on Tuesday, the right-wing media have continued to blast out a fantastical narrative that Trump is the last bulwark between the United States and leftist anarchy. Few places has that message been more clear than on conservative and Christian radio.
Last month, Salem Radio Network host Kevin McCullough appeared on the show of Eric Metaxas, a nationally syndicated host and author who also serves on the president’s evangelical advisory council, to forecast a landslide Trump victory in the election. McCullough condemned the Democratic Party for what he called “a culture of abortion, a culture of sexual anarchy” as he talked about his voting predictions.
Metaxas falsely described Democratic vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris as “literally the most liberal senator who exists in the Senate” and then went on a racist diatribe questioning whether Harris is really Black.
“It’s this cynical thing about picking somebody who is supposedly Black. I think I am far darker than she is, and she’s married, of course, to a white man,” Metaxas, who is white, told listeners.
Salem Radio Network is a group of radio and publishing enterprises started in the 1980s that has grown into a media powerhouse that reaches listeners in every corner of the country. It has openly celebrated Trump’s 2016 victory as a boon for its business and its many shows, with Senior Vice President Phil Boyce calling the president “a game changer for our format” and “the gift that keeps on giving” during a speech at an industry conference in 2018. As Trump’s attacks on fact-based media outlets have eroded trust in mainstream news sources among conservatives, right-wing radio has offered an alternative reality in which pro-Trump listeners can hear only what they want.
Salem is an explicitly conservative, explicitly Christian company. They want you to be on the Republican team, and they want...
