Harris Facing Backlash Over ‘Bashing’ Christian Faith
By Stefan J. Bos, Chief International Correspondent Worthy News
NEW YORK, USA (Worthy News) – U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris faced a backlash on Monday after she pressured devoted Christian students to leave a campaign rally last week.
Two college students from the U.S. state of Wisconsin told broadcaster Fox News they were doing “God’s work” by going “into the lion’s den” and shouting “pro-life, Christian messages” Harris during a rally on their university’s campus.
“We got a lot of backlash,” Grant Beth, a University of Wisconsin-La Crosse junior, said.
“I was pushed by an elderly woman. We were heckled at, we were cursed at, we were mocked, and that’s the biggest thing for me personally. In reflection of the event, Jesus was mocked. You know, his disciples were mocked, and that’s okay. In reality, we did God’s work, and we were there for the right reasons, and God is watching us in this moment.”
He added, “I’m all about being a cordial person no matter your beliefs, but I do believe that we were sent there by God.”
Vice President Harris held a rally on UW-La Crosse’s campus last Thursday, where she spoke about the economy and bettering the lives of middle-class Americans. “Reproductive freedom,” seen by critics as a code term for abortion, came up as she pledged to the crowd, “When Congress passes a bill to restore reproductive freedom nationwide, as president of the United States, I will proudly, proudly sign it into law.”
She also criticized former U.S. President Donald J. Trump for deliberately “hand-selecting” three Supreme Court justices with the ultimate goal of overturning the Roe v. Wade ruling that enabled abortions nationwide.
REMARKS CONDEMNED
Luke Polaske, another UW-La Crosse junior, condemned the remarks made by Harris, decrying abortion as a “sacrament to Satan.”
“When I said that, I deeply believe that as a Christian,” he said.
“About ten seconds go by, and that’s when the video of my friend Grant and I are proclaiming that ‘Christ is Lord’ and ‘Jesus is king’… [that’s] when we said that.”
In video footage of the rally, the air is rife with commotion as Beth and Polaske’s voices are heard shouting the phrases.
Harris paused her speech, turned her attention to the crowd, and said, “You guys are at the wrong rally.”
She continued as the crowd roared, “I think you meant to go to the smaller one down the street.”
Polaske offered a vivid account of the incident from his perspective, stating that he and Beth were approximately 20 to 30 yards (meters) away from Harris in the small venue. In detailing the encounter, he described his perceived interaction with the vice president.
“There’s a lot of controversy that says she wasn’t talking to us or [that] we left. We didn’t get kicked out. Well, I can speak on Grant and I’s behalf,” he said.
PUSHING STUDENT
“On video, Grant’s getting pushed and shoved, and there’s about five seconds before she tells us to go to a small rally down the street. You can see in the video that she waves. She was actually waving to me. I took this cross off my neck that I wear and, as we were getting asked to leave, I held it up in the air and waved at her and pointed at her, and she looked directly in the eye, kind of gave me an evil smirk.”
“I just want to clear that up and confirm that she 100 percent was talking to us.”
Their words were music to the ears of U.S. Senator JD Vance, who appeared pleased when, at his Wisconsin rally, someone shouted, “Jesus is King!” during his speech on Sunday afternoon.
Vance echoed the attendee and repeated the exact phrase – a different approach than Vice President Harris seemed to take last week.
Vance shared that, while he doesn’t talk about his faith often, he returned to his Christian faith as a young man and is a devout Christian. He said he was baptized in 2019.
“I say this as a Christian, as a person who was baptized for the first time just a few years ago. There is something really bizarre with Kamala Harris’ anti-Christian rhetoric and anti-Christian approach to public policy,” Vance explained.
As he continued speaking about faith and politics, he was interrupted by an attendee who shouted, “Jesus is King.” “That’s right. Jesus is King,” Vance responded.
FEEDING DORITOS
Vance then addressed a viral video of Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer wearing a Harris-Walz campaign hat while feeding Doritos to a kneeling podcast host in what some critics said made “a mockery of a sacred Christian rite.”
“I don’t think that we’ve seen anything like this in modern American politics,” Vance said.
“Gretchen Whitmer does this really bizarre thing where she acts like she’s given somebody communion, but it’s a Dorito. And, of course, Gretchen Whitmer isn’t like a minister of anything except for, you know, a church I don’t necessarily want to talk about, but think about how sacrilegious that is and think about how offensive that is to every person.”
He added, “Frankly, whether you’re a person of Christian faith or not, Donald Trump and I are going to fight for your right to live your values because that’s what the First Amendment protects.”
Vance said, “Whether you’re a Christian, a Catholic, or any other faith or no faith at all, when you see an American leader, when you see a surrogate of Kamala Harris insulting people of the Christian faith, I think that we should say to every single one of those people: ‘you’re fired!’ We’re not giving you any more power.”
Harris did not immediately respond to the criticism.