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Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance attended a town hall outside Pittsburgh on Saturday hosted by a Christian nationalist televangelist who believes that Democrat Kamala Harris has an “occult spirit” that runs through her, that she represents the “spirit of Jezebel,” and that she used “witchcraft” during the September presidential debate.

Vance spoke to the crowd in Monroeville, Pennsylvania, about his upbringing in a working-class family in Ohio and about how drug use within his family and his conversion to Catholicism have shaped his life. He also tied the country’s opioid crisis and crime to illegal immigration while praising the United States as the place where he met and married the daughter of Indian immigrants and built a biracial family. 

“That’s a cool thing that could only happen in the United States of America,” Vance said, adding that he hoped his children would forgo racial and ethnic labels and simply identify as “American.”

Vance steered clear of virulent anti-immigrant rhetoric he has used in recent weeks centered on falsehoods about Haitian immigrants eating pets in his home state of Ohio. His criticisms of Harris were not personal and focused on her policies related to the border and immigration.

Vance was at self-described “prophet” Lance Wallnau’s “Courage Tour,” a evangelical tent revival swing through seven battleground states. His planned attendance prompted questions from political strategists, including Republicans, about why the Ohio senator would appear with a leader of the fringe far-right just five weeks out from Election Day.

Wallnau introduced Vance before another pastor, Jason Howard, moderated the question-and-answer session.

Pennsylvania is a make-or-break state for former President Donald Trump, who would struggle to win the Electoral College without it. Politically moderate suburban women, as well as Latinx voters, will be critical to their White House ticket’s chances there. A recent Quinnipiac University poll of likely voters in Pennsylvania showed Vice President Harris leading Trump 59 percent to 37 percent among women overall and 56 percent to 42 percent among White women, who have broken for the Republican candidate nationally in recent cycles. 

When the first and likely only presidential debate between Harris and Trump was held this month in Philadelphia, it was a nod to the pivotal role the state is expected to play in the White House race this year. Trump did not modulate his rhetoric in the debate, using his time on stage to repeat an oft-told abortion lie that Democrats want to “execute” babies after they are born and spread the disproven anti-immigrant rumor about Haitians in Ohio. Experts nearly universally agreed that Harris won that debate. Harris agreed to do another; Trump said it was “too late.”

Wallnau grew up in Pennsylvania. He is a leader in the New Apostolic Reformation, a theological movement that advocates using Christian warfare to end the separation of church and state. It is rooted in Pentecostalism and evangelicalism, combined with the Seven Mountain Mandate, whose followers seek to influence seven spheres of society: family, religion, education, media, arts and entertainment, business, and government. The Seven Mountains Mandate began in the 1970s but did not gain prominence until Wallnau became involved and subsequently published a book. 

Wallnau has for many years trafficked in sexist and racist tropes and used anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric. In “Firewall with Lance Wallnau” on the far-right streaming and satellite station Real America’s Voice News, he called opponents of Florida’s so-called “Don’t Say Gay” law, which sought to prohibit classroom discussion of gender identity, the “trans Taliban.” Earlier this year, after the Democratic governor of Kansas vetoed a bill to ban gender-affirming treatment for minors, Wallnau wrote on the social media site X: “States will be lawless or sane depending on the organization of the Christian community and their conservative friends. Children are being evangelized by teachers unions working with Democrat LGBT activists running genital chop shops targeting children.”

Wallnau is also among those who deny Trump’s valid election loss to President Joe Biden. At a recent event in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, another political battleground state, Wallnau said: “January 6th was not an insurrection. … It was an election fraud intervention.” On that day in 2021, as pro-Trump protesters gathered in Washington after his loss and stormed the U.S. Capitol, Wallnau was present, praying for God to intervene and stop Congress from certifying the election. 

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