Rep. Riley Moore (R-WV) suggested that James Talarico, a Democrat running for U.S. Senate in Texas, was possessed by demons.
The West Virginia Republican attacked the Texas hopeful during a Friday interview with MAGA influencer Benny Johnson.
"You're fighting for light," Johnson said while introducing Moore. "Christians throughout the world, quite frankly, under persecution. Christians always are the ones who get persecuted, beheaded, slaughtered."
"They're always the ones who get trod under and nobody ever talks about them and it's evil," he continued. "You're a man of faith yourself that is actually talking about it."
For his part, Moore claimed that protesters had demonstrated outside of his church in West Virginia, but did not allege they broke the law.
"I had people protesting me outside of my church. My family and I going on," he explained. "They showed up from wherever the hell they're from. And, you know, me and my family were just trying to go to Mass. And here they are. You know, I mean, no, no space is sacred to them."
"Now we just got to make sure that James Talarico doesn't get into the Senate," Johnson said before ending the interview. "I mean, that guy saying that Jesus loves abortion and loves transing of the kids and that God is non-binary. I feel dirty, Congressman, just repeating his blasphemes and heresy on my show. I'm telling you what he says. It is antithetical to the Bible. It's actually anti-Christian. It's actually Antichrist's ideology."
"I think he is demonic," Moore remarked. "And I think we need to keep an eye on that and watchful eye because there are other forces of work in my view."
Johnson replied: "It's a defiling of God's order. It's a defiling of God's nature. Yeah. And it's pretty simple. It's nice. Even a even a, even a community college graduate like me can get it, Congressman."
Talarico, a 36-year-old part-time Presbyterian seminarian and former middle school teacher, has built a political platform rooted in Christian theology and social justice. Talarico uses scripture to champion the poor and vulnerable, relying on Christ's teachings to challenge corporate interests and political divisions. He has gained national attention for using his theological background to criticize Christian nationalism, condemning it as a "betrayal of Jesus of Nazareth" that "worships power in the name of Christ."
On his campaign website, Talarico references "a barefoot rabbi" who issued two overriding commandments: love God and love your neighbor, "because there is no love of God without love of neighbor." He writes that "every single person bears the image of the sacred; every single person is holy — not just the neighbors who look like me or pray like me or vote like me," and calls for followers to adopt the spirit of that rabbi who "walked into the seat of power and flipped over the tables of injustice," arguing it is time to "start flipping tables."
His opposition to a Ten Commandments bill went viral when he declared: "Maybe they should try following the Ten Commandments before mandating them," demonstrating his conviction that genuine faith should guide political action rather than serve as political theater.
