Vance to attend town hall with evangelist who accused Harris of ‘witchcraft’

JD Vance is being criticized for a planned town hall this weekend with Lance Wallnau, a pro-Trump evangelical leader who has backed election conspiracies and accused Kamala Harris of using witchcraft.

“This is Vance’s endorsement of one of the worst, most conspiratorial, Christian supremacist spectacles in the country,” Matthew D. Taylor, a scholar at the Institute for Islamic, Christian, & Jewish Studies,” wrote on X on Thursday.

He warned the Monroeville, Pennsylvania, event would take on extra significance because it’s close to where Trump was nearly assassinated, a near-miss Trump’s more religious supporters take as divine intervention.

The Harris campaign, meanwhile, blasted Vance in a statement for appearing alongside a “conspiracy theorist” like Wallnau.

Speaking to an online talk show earlier this month, Wallnau said Kamala Harris’s debate performance was tied to witchcraft.

“She can look presidential,” Wallnau said. “That’s the seduction of what I would say is witchcraft. That’s the manipulation of imagery that creates an impression contrary to the truth, but it seduces you into seeing it. So that spirit, that occult spirit, I believe is operating on her and through her.”

The Independent has contacted Vance and Wallnau for comment.

As The Independent has reported, Wallnau is among a group of evangelical Christian leaders backing Trump as part of their goal of establishing what they call the New Apostolic Reformation, an American theocracy. As part of this campaign, Wallnau has popularized an idea known as the Seven Mountains mandate, which calls on Christians to secure positions of influence over politics, education, family, the arts, the media, business, and religion.

Vance’s town hall is a stop on a nationwide