Super-Christian GOP Rep. Dan Crenshaw Won't Have People Questioning His Faith By Directly Quoting Him

He loves Jesus, and America too.

Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas) made quite a spectacle of himself during a Q and A at a Tea Party event Monday night. A young woman -- misidentified in some retweets as a "10 year old girl," but she's actually 18 and a volunteer for a rightwing primary rival of Crenshaw -- had a question about some weird pseudointellectual musings Crenshaw had made in a 2020 podcast interview in which he seemed to suggest Jesus was a fictional character.

That prompted the congressman to lose his shit, demanding she not question his faith and accusing her of "twisting" his words, as members of the audience started booing and heckling him.

 Here's one video of the exchange (there's another that doesn't turn sideways, but the young woman is nearly inaudible in it. That one does include a bit more of her introductory remarks, in which she says Crenshaw "lied about being a Christian"):

Absolutely hilarious. @DanCrenshawTX falls apart when asked about a direct quotepic.twitter.com/58yDmAH4o9

— SETH WEATHERS (@SETH WEATHERS) 1642471093 

The young woman quotes Crenshaw ham-handedly talking about "hero archetypes" in a March 2020 podcast with someone named Jocko, and notes that Crenshaw had said:

CRENSHAW: The most important thing here is that we have important hero archetypes that we look up to. Jesus is a hero archetype. Superman is a hero archetype. Real characters, too. I could name a thousand: Rosa Parks, Ronald Reagan.

The woman followed that with "I can't wrap my head around this." Crenshaw shot back angrily, "Well, let me help you. Put a period after the word 'Jesus' and don't question my faith."

People in the crowd booed, and one person shouted, "You're talking to a little girl! You can't talk to a kid like that!"

Crenshaw stuck to his guns, because darned if he was going to let anyone out-Jesus him:

CRENSHAW: Don't question my faith. You guys can ask questions about all of these things, but don't question my faith.

WOMAN: I can question your faith if this is what you said.

CRENSHAW: You can read the quote again. But nowhere in that quote am I saying 'Jesus is not real.' That's a ridiculous statement.

An audience member then shouted. "He's the Son of GOD!" and Crenshaw replied, "Of course He's the Son of God and of course He's real."

The woman accused Crenshaw of saying two different things about Jesus, one on the podcast, and another there at the meeting. He said he didn't think anyone listening to the podcast would have misunderstood his point, and that "I think you're twisting it that way," prompting hoots and more catcalls from the tea partiers.

That was followed, logically enough, by a couple of chants of the traditional expression of Christian faith, "Let's go, Brandon! Let's go, Brandon!" because it's Texas and they're tea partiers and Jesus wants you to say "Fuck you, Biden" whenever you can, as long as you're polite about it.

Because Yr Wonkette loves you and wants you to understand the context of this dumb Jesus Fight, we listened to a few minutes of the podcast immediately before and after the bit the young woman quoted, and we'd say she quoted him pretty much accurately, although she left out a bit of very dumb pseudo-intellectual context that probably won't matter anyway. Crenshaw's remarks about "societal hero archetypes" were part of a longer rant about how attention-seeking media figures who take offense to every last little thing are bad for America. Yes, irony is dead once again.

Was Crenshaw literally calling Jesus a fictional character? We don't think so, but then we're a godforsaken America-hating atheist commie who went to grad school and dissertated about archetypes like Bugs Bunny. His point was that the figures Americans supposedly all look up to, like Jesus, Superman, Rosa Parks, and Ronald Reagan, all have certain admirable characteristics in common. Yes, Rosa Parks, who put herself in danger by refusing to sit in the back of the bus, and Ronald Reagan, who infamously kicked off his 1980 campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi, where three civil rights workers were murdered. Archetypal peas in a pod they were.

Now, while Crenshaw did in fact say "Jesus is a hero archetype. Superman is a hero archetype," and then listed those ideological soulmates Reagan and Parks, he can plausibly argue that "real characters" was meant to contrast Parks and Reagan only with Superman, not with Jesus and Superman. Or not; the interview is painful to listen to.

Not that it's likely to make much difference to the folks who want to accuse Crenshaw of being soft on theological doctrine. Crenshaw will probably remain in trouble with the faithful for his heretical insistence that Donald Trump actually lost the 2020 election, when True Believers know in their hearts that Jesus is Lord and an Italian satellite changed all the votes.

While the young woman in the video hasn't yet been identified by name — lucky her! — one of Crenshaw's opponents in the March primary election, Jameson Ellis, tweeted out her age, and another Twitter Detective turned up a photo of her holding a campaign sign for Ellis, apparently wearing the same sweater she had on at Monday's Tea Party event. The video would have been funnier if Crenshaw really had lost his shit at a ten-year-old, but it's plenty funny as it is.

 Ellis later tweeted out a statement acknowledging she's a "supporter" of his campaign, but emphatically stating that "no one from my campaign remotely suggested" that she should confront Crenshaw. But hey, since she happened to bring forward some very convenient oppo research against Crenshaw, Ellis added that he and his campaign are "VERY PROUD" of her courage in standing up for her Christian faith, yadda yadda yadda.

Ellis is running well to the right of Crenshaw, retweeting calls for justice for the "political prisoners" jailed while awaiting trial for participating in the January 6 insurrection. Just to burnish his far-right credentials, he also recently called Crenshawa "principled RINO" and a "globalist shill," not that there's anything wrong with afew anti-Semitic tropes among good Christian conservatives.

So no, no heroes or even hero archetypes are to be found in this wingnut-on-wingnut violence, regardless of their age.

[ Houston Chronicle / Daily Dot ]

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