Another man compared LGBTQ people to pedophiles.
And a pastor once offered a political rally prayer that asked God to “silence” Trump’s critics.
A Raw Story review of the Iowa Faith Leader Coalition list, which includes more than 250 names, identified David Pautsch of Davenport, Iowa, as the person who once suggested Obama should be hanged for treason.
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Pautsch, who’s challenging Republican incumbent Mariannette Miller-Meeks in a congressional primary, also encouraged people to come to the defense of former Rep. Steve King of Iowa after King told the New York Times in 2019, “White nationalist, white supremacist, Western civilization — how did that language become offensive?”
“I thought it was an important question to ask — why are those offensive words?” Pautsch said.
Pautsch is the organizer of a longtime annual prayer breakfast, which has attracted politicians such as Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA) and former Louisiana governor and presidential candidate Bobby Jindal. Pautsch said the breakfast isn’t about politics or skin color.
“This is a matter of who has embraced Jesus Christ,” Pautsch told the Quad Cities Times before the 2019 prayer breakfast. “It is a simple fact that the cultures that have embraced Christ have flourished — and those that haven't are stuck in a degraded state. We are talking about a huge cultural development issue. The cultures that embrace Jesus Christ are the ones that last and are successful. Just read history. And it's a biblically established fact of history."
The Quad Cities Times reporter asked the featured guest at that year’s prayer breakfast, former Wisconsin governor and presidential candidate Scott Walker, if he believed in Christian superiority.
Walker, who unsuccessfully ran for president in 2016, demurred.
"My focus at the prayer breakfast will be on how all of us are welcome at the table of God," Walker said.
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Pautsch’s most recent prayer breakfast featured losing Arizona gubernatorial candidate and current senatorial candidate Kari Lake. In 2021, MyPillow CEO and Trump conspiracy theorist Mike Lindell was the featured guest.
Pautsch posted to Facebook a list of “Tips for Effective Prayer Breakfast Participation.” Among them: “Encourage every Christian to pay something” and “Collect the $50 for the Table of Eight up front.”
Pautsch said he’s challenging the Republican incumbent, Mariannette Miller-Meeks, for Congress because she’s “too often out of step with the principles of her fellow Republicans and with biblical morality.”
Neither Pautsch nor Trump’s campaign responded to requests for comment.
Joshua Graber of Vinton, Iowa, delivered the opening prayer at a Trump rally in October — asking God to “silence” Trump’s critics. Those critics include, apparently, the people who have charged the former president with 91 felonies across two federal and two state-level cases.
“We ask that those who stand against him would be put to silence, that those horrendous actions against him and his family be exposed and struck down,” said Graber, pastor of Cornerstone Baptist Church. “... Give us the courage to stand with President Trump in the caucuses and elections to come.”
Graber routinely rails against the federal government. But he also has personal financial ties to it: It was that government that gave him a Rural Housing Service loan, on which the government foreclosed in 2018, and it was that government to which he turned for help in a 2019 bankruptcy filing.
Graber did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Yet another of Trump’s faith leaders, Rick Bick, has compared LGBTQ people to pedophiles and claims to have himself traveled to heaven.
“For people that might want to question whether there’s a heaven, there’s a heaven. I’ve been there,” Bick, of Ottumwa, Iowa, said in a 2022 video. “… It’s almost eight years ago that I had a massive heart attack, died, went to heaven and got sent back. It’s a great place.”
In a Facebook post, Bick said, “Jesus sent me back!!” Bick didn’t offer more detail.
Bick did not respond to requests for comment.
In the video, titled The Purpose of the Bible, Bick lashed out at LGBTQ people.
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“I live in a city which is adamant about promoting the LGBTQ agenda,” he said. “That’s not how God wants us to live. We need to stand out from that. We need to do things different.”
Bick lost his bid for mayor of Ottumwa, Iowa, in 2021. During the campaign, he was asked if he would approve permits for gay pride events. Earlier in the year, Ottumwa Pride had a block party and the City Council approved a Pride Month proclamation.
Bick said he doesn’t consider the LGBTQ community as a “people group” in the same way he regards racial groups.
“If you pick this sexual group, what about the pedophile group?” Bick said. “Are you going to give them special preference — well, I won’t go any farther because I could say other things I dealt with as a minister. To me, it’s a sexual preference group; not a race or ethnicity.”
Bick also criticized Mormon theology in the video.
“Many years ago I planted a church in the oldest Mormon community in Arizona,” Bick said. “You know, there’s a lot of false doctrine there. They use words and terminology that are the same that we use, but we need to know what (they mean), because their definition of Jesus is a whole lot different than ours.”
Meanwhile, Trump’s comments about being a “dictator” and immigrants “poisoning the blood of our country” — among innumerable other things that would sink the candidacy of anyone else — are actually helping the former president in Iowa. He is gaining support, according to a recent poll of Iowans likely to caucus.
