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'Full on Satan worship': Conservatives freak out over Sam Smith's Grammy performance
February 06, 2023
Singers Sam Smith and Kim Petras delivered a devilish performance at the Grammys on Sunday night, and it has many conservative commentators in a Satanic panic.
During the awards ceremony, Smith and Petras performed their song "Unholy," with Smith clad in a top hat featuring red devil horns and surrounded by red-robed female dancers.
Conservatives on Twitter reacted with horror to the performance, which they believed was an actual tribute to Satan.
"The Grammys have gone full-on Satan worship right on prime time TV," wrote Newsmax's Benny Johnson.
Christian life coach Solomon Buchi also thought that the performance was not symbolic but a literal ritual in honor of the devil.
"If as a Christian, you think we are reaching when we talk about the dominance and normalization of Satan worship in pop music, you need discernment," he wrote. "Sam Smith’s performance at the Grammy’s last night was satanic, gory. No, it’s not art; it’s symbolic of who they serve."
Human Events editor Ben Kew also believed that the performance was intended to pay tribute to the Lord of Darkness.
"I know we on the right probably use the word satanic too often but this peformance (sic) from Sam Smith is literally a tribute to Satan," he argued.
"Definitely not a spiritual war," Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk sarcastically quipped about the performance.
Other right-wing Christians linked Smith's performance to the COVID-19 vaccines, which many of them believe to be the biblical "Mark of the Beast."
"Sam Smith’s satanic performance at the Grammy’s ended with a Pfizer commercial," wrote conservative influencer Robby Starbuck. "You can’t get it more on the nose than that. Pfizer and Hollywood deserve each other."
Another right-wing Twitter user complained about the injustice of Smith being allowed to wear fake devil horns on television even as rapper Kanye West was canceled for opening praising late Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler.
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Republican Nikki Haley, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and ex-governor of South Carolina, is expected to formally announce her presidential run on Wednesday, February 15. This will make Haley the second candidate to officially enter the 2024 GOP presidential primary, although Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis appears to be gearing up to enter that primary as well.
According to Daily Beast reporters Jake Lahut and Zachary Petrizzo, former President Donald Trump and his allies are hoping to derail Haley’s campaign before it gains momentum. Trump was the first GOP candidate to officially announce his 2024 presidential run.
“With the former UN ambassador telegraphing her presidential announcement, the Trump campaign is champing at the bit to finally vanquish an enemy after a sleepy first few months,” Lahut and Petrizzo report in an article published on February 6. “Those familiar with the discussions on how to handle Trump’s first 2024 primary opponent see Haley as a weak candidate offering the former president a chance to settle a score, as well as an opportunity to experiment with new tactics.”
READ MORE: Nikki Haley schemed with Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump to replace Pence as VP: Pompeo book
According to the Beast reporters, Trump’s campaign views Haley as “a weak opponent he can easily dispense with.”
A source close to Trump, quoted anonymously, told the Beast, “They’ll definitely have a nickname for her. He had a nickname for every one of his opponents in 2016, so that tactic — while some of his tactics have proven to be ineffective or people have learned to deal with him — the naming works.”
A GOP strategist, also interviewed on condition of anonymity, sees Haley as “the Carly Fiorina of 2024” — a reference to the former Hewlett Packard CEO who ran against Trump in 2016’s GOP presidential primary. In 2020, the conservative Fiorina endorsed now-President Joe Biden.
That strategist told the Beast, “Trump will lean in on her past liberal stances on Black Lives Matter, crime, and immigration that are very weak. He will also surely play up her political flip-flops and promising not to run, now that she is jumping in. Basically, he will paint her as just another politician who doesn’t believe anything and only wants power.”
READ MORE: Nikki Haley 'embodies the collapse' of the GOP: Republican strategist
Read The Daily Beast’s full report at this link.
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Texas defense hawks urge Congress away from military funding cuts to raise the debt ceiling
February 06, 2023
WASHINGTON — As U.S. House Republicans debate what to cut out of federal spending in their debt ceiling fight with Democrats, a handful of Texans have a clear message: Do not mess with the military.
Republicans in the majority are using the debt ceiling as a negotiating tool with the Biden administration to reduce federal spending, but they are divided over where to trim the fat. Some, including Texans who have long defended military spending, are asserting Congress shouldn’t touch defense funding, while others say all funding other than entitlements should be on the table. It’s an uncertainty that Republicans can hardly afford with only a six-vote margin of control in the House.
[U.S. Rep. Chip Roy says he’ll use debt ceiling threat to push through his border security plan]
Texas Republicans have eked out central roles in the debt ceiling discussions within their party. U.S. Reps. Michael McCaul, House Foreign Affairs Committee chair, and Kay Granger, House Appropriations chair, are both known defense hawks who are against cutting any military spending. Meanwhile, Reps. Jodey Arrington, House Budget Committee chair, and Chip Roy, a member of the Freedom Caucus, are willing to scorch earth to balance the country’s books. Roy finagled new influence within his party after the fraught power balance created during this year’s tumultuous House Speaker election.
The stakes are high. The Biden administration urged Congress last month to swiftly raise the debt ceiling in order to pay off interest on its debts and to finance federal programs already approved by Congress. Failure to do so could mean the country defaulting on its debt — which it has never done before — and gravely damaging faith in the country’s economy and assets.
It’s an outcome both parties agree would be catastrophic for the world. The federal government is projected to run out of money in the summer, at which point Congress will be forced to raise the debt ceiling in order to avoid extreme measures.
“I think it’s fair to say this is the most serious situation concerning the debt ceiling since 2011,” said U.S. Rep. Brendan Boyle, D-Pennsylvania, the top Democrat on the House Budget Committee.
Defense spending has steadily increased under both Democratic and Republican presidents and Congresses. Last year’s federal spending bill included a 10% increase in defense spending, growth that defense hawks in the Republican conference, like McCaul and Granger, assert is necessary with growing threats from China, Russia and Iran. The bill included about $45 billion in aid for Ukraine and NATO in a bid to stave off further aggression from Russia.
But a vocal handful of far-right Republicans in the conference are skeptical about sending more money to defend Ukraine. They argue securing the U.S.’ southern border should be a bigger priority. It’s a view that McCaul calls dangerous.
“If Ukraine falls, Chairman Xi in China’s going to invade Taiwan,” McCaul said in a CNN interview. “They talk about the border — not mutually exclusive at all. We can do both. We’re a great country.”
Last year’s spending package to fund the federal government took months of negotiations to pass, with high potential for a collapse before the end of Congress. The uncertainty led to fears within the Defense Department that it would not be able to plan its financial agenda just as Russia threatened to escalate its war in Ukraine, and defense spending supporters aren’t keen on a repeat.
Granger’s committee determines how much money should go to individual government programs, and although she opposed the spending bill because of its high spending on non-defense priorities, the Fort Worth Republican is a major supporter of defense spending, including manufacturing in her North Texas district.
Roy said he would prefer to preserve or even increase defense spending in the next budget process, but he isn’t ruling out trimming the defense fat in order to balance the country’s books. When asked if defense spending was still in the mix to be cut, he said, “You’ve got to go figure out how to get it done.”
Roy also voted against a $40.1 billion aid package for Ukraine last May, shortly after Russia’s February invasion of Ukraine, though his primary objection to the bill was the manner in which it was rushed to the floor, barring members from studying and debating it before it was put up for a vote. He also raised concerns with the lack of revenue streams to finance the bill, meaning another pile-on to the national debt.
Roy told The Texas Tribune his personal preference would be to lower all discretionary spending — other than defense — to levels from before the pandemic. He would not touch mandatory spending for entitlement programs such as Medicare and Social Security benefits. Doing so would be politically fraught with Republican voters, many of whom rely on the social spending benefits.
But that leaves few options for cutting, and Democrats have made it clear the kinds of cuts Republicans are pushing for on non-defense programs are a nonstarter.
“If you say we're gonna cut government but we’re not going to touch Social Security, Medicare or defense? OK, well, you’re talking about, you know, pennies on the dollar,” Boyle said. “Nondiscretionary defense includes a lot of important things: education, Pell Grants, health care for veterans. A number of things that, frankly, many of their members are for.”
“This is a little like saying, I’m going to go on a diet but I’m not going to cut out cheesecake, cookies and all sorts of sweets,” he added.
Republicans will need to get Democrats on board in the Senate, which is under Democratic control.
Republicans have long been fearful that the ballooning national debt — much of which is taken out to pay off past loans — is creating an unsustainable burden for future generations. They view the impending debt limit as the perfect chance to force Democrats to get on board with provisions to rein in the deficit. Both parties have voted to raise the debt ceiling, and the national debt has increased steadily under both parties.
Far-right members of the House Republican conference, led by Roy, negotiated with Speaker Kevin McCarthy during his bid for the speakership to return overall discretionary spending to fiscal year 2022 levels, which were the spending levels implemented before last December’s $1.7 trillion government spending package. That would mean a cut to roughly $1.47 trillion in fiscal year 2024, which starts this October.
Previews of the current debate emerged then, when Rep. Tony Gonzales, R-San Antonio, voted against the package that set the rules for the current Congress and included the agreement to lower government spending.
“Putting millions of dollars on the fence is a bad idea. And yeah, especially now when we got a rising threat and China and threats to Taiwan,” Gonzales, a Navy veteran, said at the time.
Roy’s office sternly denied that defense cuts were ever part of any negotiations with party leadership at the time.
Meanwhile, Democrats in Congress and the White House say defaulting on the federal debt is too dangerous of a possibility to use as a bargaining chip and are demanding to raise the debt ceiling without any conditions. Boyle asserted that Congress will have to deliberate over how much money to spend in its annual budget and appropriations process anyway, and there was no need to tie spending to the debt ceiling.
But Arrington dismissed Democrats’ demands of a “clean” debt ceiling lift as unrealistic. Democrats will need Republicans’ support as much as Republicans need theirs to lift the debt ceiling, and he is refusing to pass on the chance to make spending cuts aligned with the agreement reached between Republican leadership and Roy’s dissenting camp in January.
“I don’t think the president will escape having to deal with negotiating some fiscal reforms in the most responsible way so that we can bend that debt curve, so that we can get on a sustainable path, stave off a debt crisis and act like adults,” Arrington said in an interview with Fox News.
This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2023/02/06/texas-gop-house-debt-ceiling-military-spending/.
The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.
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