For the better part of three years, Donald Trump has never missed an opportunity to rail about how his foes in “the swamp” have been out to get him. He ran it up into Defcon 1 after his upset victory in 2016, claiming that those evil, evil liberals and never-Trumpers are bullying him, his family, and the people who voted for him.
We got a lovely example of this on Thursday night. While at a campaign rally in Bossier City, Louisiana; Trump whined about the effect the impeachment inquiry was having on his family. No, this isn’t snark. Watch him say it here.
Really, Mr. Trump? What about the impact your attempt to bully Ukraine into helping him in a politically motivated investigation of Joe Biden had on this country and its standing in the world?
But it turns out that this may have been only the second most pitiful example of a prominent conservative whining about how those big, bad libruls are ganging up on him. Just 24 hours before Trump took the stage, one of his staunchest religious right defenders, Rick Wiles, riffed on the criticism he has faced for his hard-right and often anti-Semitic commentary. Well, apparently this criticism has gotten to Wiles. Earlier this week, he announced that he is packing up and leaving YouTube and shutting down his nightly television show.
Wiles and co-host Doc Burkhart were in Singapore for the FinTech Festival, the world’s biggest gathering for financial technology companies. He used this opportunity to essentially give his critics the finger. Wiles claimed that he had had it with the attacks he has faced on YouTube, and has begun the process of closing down his YouTube channel. For good measure, he is also downsizing his media outreach and canceling his television show–which airs mainly online and on a few small cable systems–sometime in 2020.
Watch Wiles make the announcement here, at around the 17:11 mark.
Wiles told his audience that Jesus commands us to “shake the dust from your feet” and leave any town that doesn’t want to listen to the Gospel. After all, Jesus said, if you try to go to every town, you’ll never reach them before he comes back.
Wiles claimed he was doing just that with “the YouTube crowd.” He saw YouTube as “a virtual town,” and it had become increasingly clear to him that “I’m not wanted” there. He claimed that he is called to preach to those who have “ears to hear”–that is, those who are ready to receive it.
Instead, Wiles claimed that his YouTube channel is dominated by “an unruly mob” who throws virtual “tomatoes and cabbages” at him. This mob is mostly made up of “spiritual rebels” whose nature is to “gripe and complain.” By his estimate, some 90 percent of his social media audience falls into this category. He believed that Jesus wouldn’t stay in such an environment, and indeed ran from such environments in the past.
Wiles also claimed that he has to protect those who do want to hear his message. Supposedly, God recently told him to “stop responding” to the critics. He claimed that when he responds to critics, he has to “slop the hogs” rather than “feed the sheep” as Jesus commanded. As he sees it, the hogs are “biting the sheep and taking the food from them.” He argued that the proper response is to “shut the farm gates and lock the barn doors” in order to keep the hogs out.
To that end, Wiles announced, he’s shutting off all commenting on YouTube. He’s also scaling back YouTube posting before ending it entirely as of New Year’s Day 2020. He is also ending the television show, and will gradually switch TruNews to a paywalled podcast. Not only will it cut costs, but, he claimed, it will also keep his true followers from being attacked.
So Wiles claims that he’s being bombarded with “tomatoes and cabbages.” What prompted this response, you ask? Well, he has argued that Trump’s critics are guilty of sedition, and even called for Trump to issue a real-life Order 66. More recently, he has claimed that Democrats risk being hunted down if Trump diehards believe Nancy Pelosi and her colleagues ran Trump out of office.
Wiles has also taken to spewing anti-Semitic bile in a way that would do Richard Spencer and Andrew Anglin proud. He has claimed that Jews are agents of the devil, and has shamelessly ran with the old canard that Jews have their tentacles in everything. What makes this even more obscene is that he has peddled this bilge while people who turn the hot lights on hate merchants like him find themselves being locked out of Twitter for merely doing their jobs.
If Wiles seriously believes that we have no right to attack him for spewing garbage like this, he’s delusional. Seen in this light, he’s only putting a positive light on the fact that he can’t seem to stand the heat. And he’s doing so in a way that makes it appear that he’s going decently. Here’s a news flash, Rick. You’re not fooling anybody. You know that we ran you off, and don’t have the guts to admit it.
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