Shane Vaughn, a pro-MAGA Christian pastor in Mississippi, was forced to give a bizarre explanation for why his Biblical "prophecy" about Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) becoming Speaker of the House didn't come true, Newsweek reported on Friday.
Jordan, a famous Freedom Caucus firebrand, was one of several candidates nominated and turned down for speaker during the weekslong House GOP civil war following a band of renegades forcing a vote to remove Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) from the speakership. After 22 days of internal squabbling, several rival candidates, and former President Donald Trump weighing in against many of them, the GOP finally made a new speaker selection in Rep. Mike Johnson (R-LA), a far-right former hate group lawyer who believes abortions for any reason should be punishable by hard labor, and was active in the plot to overturn the 2020 presidential election.
But Vaughn came up with a creative reason for why his Jordan prophecy was actually right all along.
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"Vaughn of First Harvest Ministries in Waveland, Mississippi, prophesied last week that Jordan would become speaker because it was 'Yahweh's plan' for Trump to control the House with Jordan as his 'proxy.' When Johnson was elected instead this week, Vaughn insisted that his prophecy had not failed, bizarrely claiming that 'Mike Johnson IS Jim Jordan,'" reported Aila Slisco. "In a video clip shared Thursday to X, formerly Twitter, by Right Wing Watch — a project of liberal advocacy group People for the American Way — Vaughn argues that the close relationship between the two Republican congressmen had caused Johnson to become a 'duplicate' of Jordan, referring to the new House speaker as 'Mike Jordan' at one point."
This is not the first bizarre claim that Vaughn has made. In 2021, Vaughn proclaimed that the $1,400 stimulus checks passed by President Joe Biden's American Rescue Plan were really an "offering" from Trump.
After a viral post immediately after the 2020 election in which Vaughn asserted Trump's victory pushed him into a national spotlight, he also expressed regret that the newfound attention on him dredged up his three-year-prison sentence a decade before for insurance and bank fraud in Louisiana.
