The legacy media’s double standard for Christian politicians was on full display last week.

Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) is a lawmaker known for speaking openly about his Christian faith. Last week, he appeared on “CBS Mornings Plus” to promote his new book, “One Nation Always Under God: Profiles in Christian Courage.” But instead of asking about the book, CBS News anchor Adriana Diaz chose to challenge the legitimacy of Scott’s faith with a now-familiar line of attack.

The faith test becomes just another political weapon — one wielded not to clarify the truth but to embarrass political opponents.

“As a practicing Christian, how do you reconcile your support for President Trump when many people see his actions as lacking Christian values?” Diaz asked.

It’s the same question we’ve heard repeatedly asked of Trump-supporting Christians, and, to his credit, Scott did not flinch.

But the question reveals something much bigger than Scott, Trump, or even the Republican Party. It exposes the media’s asymmetrical “faith test” — one applied rigorously to Trump-supporting conservatives but never to Democrats.

Faith on trial

The question itself is a rhetorical sleight of hand. It implies that supporting Trump is inherently anti-Christian and that real Christianity is whatever Trump isn’t. By that logic, Scott stands guilty until proven innocent.

But the problem isn’t just the question. It’s the blatant double standard.

If it’s fair to interrogate Tim Scott on whether his support for President Trump squares with the teachings of Jesus, then surely it’s fair game to press professing Christian Democrats on whether the policies and people they support align with Christian theology and ethics, right?

Except that almost never happens.

When was the last time a news anchor interrogated a Democrat — like former President Joe Biden, Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), or Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.), for instance — on how the support for abortion comports with 2,000 years of unambiguous Christian teachings about protecting innocent life, especially of the unborn?

Has any Democrat, for that matter, been grilled on whether endorsing the LGBTQ agenda — including radical trans procedures for children — is consistent with biblical ethics?

If such questions have been asked of Democrats, they’ve gone unnoticed, which is telling because these aren’t minor theological quibbles. They’re fundamental biblical issues, and Christianity has been clear-eyed about them for thousands of years.

Tested, then twisted

Diaz’s question reveals an underlying assumption: that Christianity naturally aligns with progressive politics.

That’s why journalists feel compelled to question Trump-supporting Christians about the congruency of their politics and theology, but never think to challenge a Democrat for supporting policies that clearly contradict Christian orthodoxy and biblical teaching. It’s because they don’t recognize or perceive the obvious inconsistency.

This double standard is as dangerous as it is subversive.

It redefines Christianity in the public imagination, not as an ancient faith with its own transcendent moral authority, but as a soft and therapeutic set of values (i.e., tolerance, inclusion, “compassion”), conveniently shaped to match the political priorities of the left.

RELATED: How the liberal media twists ‘church and state’ to hide what it truly fears

The media isn’t actually interested in theological nuance or serious conversations about faith and politics. Their agenda is clear: to police the boundaries of acceptable public religion.

And in their eyes, supporting Trump is a grave sin.

If journalists truly believe that public officials should be held accountable to the moral standards of their faith, that’s fine. But that standard must be applied equally. You can’t grill Republicans for supporting Trump but never interrogate Democrats championing abortion, the LGBTQ agenda, and the destruction of the traditional family.

Otherwise, the “faith test” becomes just another political weapon — one wielded not to clarify the truth but to embarrass political opponents who dissent from the liberal consensus.

Sacred spin shattered

If the press were honest and intellectually serious, they would apply the faith test fairly.

It would look something like this:

Mr. Biden, as a Catholic, how do you reconcile Roman Catholic teaching on the sanctity of life with your support for abortion?Mrs. Pelosi, how does your Christian faith inform your views on marriage and family policy?Mr. Warnock, how do you interpret biblical passages on protecting vulnerable life in light of your support for abortion and the trans agenda?

These aren’t “gotcha” questions. They’re parallel to what Scott faced last week — only aimed in the other direction. And if politicians can’t answer these questions without spin and deflection, that would tell us something important.

Scott handled himself with grace and focus. But Trump-supporting Republicans shouldn’t be the only side forced to reconcile their faith and politics on the public stage. If the media wants to play referee on Christian consistency, they need to enforce the rules on both sides.

Fairness — and honesty — demands equal scrutiny.

Anything less is not journalism. It’s partisanship dressed up as moral concern, and it’s why Americans no longer trust the mainstream press.

Diaz tried to weaponize Christ against Scott and MAGA Christians. But the shot backfired, exposing yet another double standard in the media.

​Tim scott, Cbs news, Adriana diaz, Legacy media, Media bias, Christianity, Maga, Maga christians, Donald trump, Christian, Faith 

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard was asked in a recent interview about joining the military in the wake of 9/11 and her 2004 deployment to Iraq.

After reflecting on her friend’s slaying by an IED and on the terrible prices paid by some of her other fellow service members, Gabbard told Miranda Devine, host of “Pod Force One,” that their “memories, their service, their sacrifice, the sacrifices of their families motivates the work that we do every day to make sure that the president has the best, most objective, relevant intelligence so that he can make the best-informed decisions.”

The DNI noted that she knows firsthand from the Iraq War “what the implications are when you have intelligence weaponized and in that case manufactured … to start a regime-change war that I served in and that so many of my friends served in and too many of my friends and too many Americans lost their lives in.”

‘James Clapper was on the team that created that manufactured intelligence assessment that led to the Iraq War — about the WMDs.’

Gabbard identified one of the individuals responsible for the deceit that greased America’s way into Iraq: former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper.

Before Clapper settled into former President Barack Obama’s inner circle, he served as former President George W. Bush’s director of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, the Pentagon unit responsible for analyzing spy-satellite photos as well as other technically gathered intelligence, including soil samples.

Bush established the Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction in 2004 to investigate the intelligence concerning weapons of mass destruction prior to the 2003 American invasion of Iraq.

The commission’s March 2005 report to the former president stated:

On the brink of war, and in front of the whole world, the United States government asserted that Saddam Hussein had reconstituted his nuclear weapons program, had biological weapons and mobile biological weapon production facilities, and had stockpiled and was producing chemical weapons. All of this was based on the assessments of the U.S. Intelligence Community. And not one bit of it could be confirmed when the war was over.

When assigning blame, the report noted that it was partly a “failure on the part of those who collect intelligence — CIA’s and the Defense Intelligence Agency’s spies, the National Security Agency’s eavesdroppers, and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency’s imagery experts.”

Clapper readily admitted in 2018, “My fingerprints are on the infamous national intelligence assessment of October 2002” that set the stage for the American invasion.

He told CNN’s Dana Bash in 2018 that the intelligence community “built a case in our own minds, a house of cards, it turned out, that led us to the conclusion with pretty high confidence that they were there, and it turns out they weren’t.”

RELATED: If no one goes to jail, the coup was a success

Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg via Getty Images

The commission’s report noted that much of the intelligence that these agencies collected was “either worthless or misleading.”

That misleading data set the stage for a 20-year conflict that claimed the lives of 4,599 American service members, over 3,650 American contractors, 15 Pentagon civilian personnel, 52,337 Iraqi national military and police, 324 allied troops, roughly 210,038 civilians, 282 journalists, and 64 humanitarian workers, according to the Watson School of International and Public Affairs.

‘You see someone who has no problem whatsoever politicizing, and manufacturing, and weaponizing intelligence for a political outcome.’

“James Clapper was on the team that created that manufactured intelligence assessment that led to the Iraq War — about the WMDs,” Gabbard told Devine. “He writes about it in his book, saying that he and his team of intelligence analysts created something that was not there.”

“When you look at his actions then and you look at his actions in 2016 as Obama’s director of national intelligence, you see someone who has no problem whatsoever politicizing, and manufacturing, and weaponizing intelligence for a political outcome,” added Gabbard.

CIA Director John Ratcliffe recently declassified the appendix from the 2023 Durham report, which Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) promptly released to the public.

The appendix revealed that Clapper was one of a handful of top Obama officials briefed at the White House on Aug. 3, 2016, regarding credible intelligence that the Clinton campaign planned to smear Trump, falsely link him to Russia, then have law enforcement and the intelligence community carry the ball down the field.

RELATED: Ratcliffe releases damning Durham annex. Here’s what it reveals about Obama-Clinton Russia collusion hoax.

Chip Somodevilla/Bloomberg/Alex Wong/Anadolu/Getty Images

Ratcliffe both named Clapper as one of the intelligence officials who “pushed the known fake Steele dossier into intelligence community assessments and as the basis for Crossfire Hurricane and all that,” and accused the former DNI of manipulating intelligence “to get Trump.”

Although cognizant of a possible Clinton plot to push the Russia hoax, Clapper published the 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment, which served to legitimize the false narrative.

According to the House Intelligence Committee majority staff report recently published by Gabbard, the ICA was a work of fiction comprising misquotes, unreliable reports, lies of omission, and straight-out falsehoods.

Clapper’s fingerprints aren’t just on the false pretext for a 20-year war and the Russia collusion hoax. He was one of the 51 signatories of the infamous Oct. 19, 2020, “intel” letter that suggested the news concerning the Hunter Biden laptop had “all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.”

After it became clear in recent weeks that the Trump administration is serious about bringing those involved in what Gabbard characterized as an alleged “treasonous conspiracy” to account, Clapper indicated that he would “lawyer up.”

Blaze News was unable to reach Clapper for comment

Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

​Tulsi gabbard, Odni, Director of national intelligence, James clapper, Clapper, Obama, Russian collusion, Russia hoax, Weapons of mass destruction, Brennan, Intelligence, Intelligence community, Weapons, Iraq, Politics 

Young men have been shunning the left to show an interest in religion, the right, and traditional lifestyles at promising rates — but that doesn’t mean our country is in the clear.

Particularly because, of all members of society in America, young, white, Christian men face the biggest uphill battle when it comes to the culture wars raging all around us.

BlazeTV host Steve Deace is well aware.

“It is true that if you are a young, white male, particularly one who is a Christian and either desires to be married to a woman and have children with her or already is, virtually every institution that matters in this culture has you marked for cultural death,” Deace says.

“You are on a most-wanted enemies list,” he adds.

In order to change this, Deace says we need to “confront this racialism” in the church and “call it out for the demonic evil that it is.”

“If we don’t, these young men will reject the church out of disdain for the social stigma they are receiving for nothing other than the lack of melanin in their skin,” he says.

“You’re just not going to be able, for any prolonged period of time, [to] tell white men, as they see a black young man stab to death another white young man, and raise and make money off of that crime, that heinous crime. You can’t just tell them, ‘Well, shucks, nothing’s happening here. Move on.’ That’s just not sustainable,” executive producer Aaron McIntire agrees.

“When you are being castigated … if you’re being discriminated against … you’re not just going to let that go. History has shown that just can’t go on into perpetuity,” he adds.

While Deace doesn’t believe that our own form of racial idolatry is the correct response, he does believe it will be the response if this continues.

“A petty criminal who probably died of a fentanyl overdose gets global days of remembrance, with protests and riots all over the freaking world. … This black kid over some form of acknowledgement of diss or beef culture stabs one of his classmates right in the heart and raises $100K, crowdfunds $100K in just days off of it,” Deace says.

“If we don’t correct that, the opposite form of racial idolatry is exactly what we are going to get,” he adds.

Want more from Steve Deace?

To enjoy more of Steve’s take on national politics, Christian worldview, and principled conservatism with a snarky twist, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

​Camera phone, Free, Sharing, Upload, Video, Video phone, Youtube.com, Steve deace show, Steve deace, The blaze, Blazetv, Blaze news, Blaze podcasts, Blaze podcast network, Blaze media, Blaze online, Blaze originals, Democrats, Republicans, Christians, Conservatives, Young christian men, Religion, Racial idolatry, George floyd, Austin metcalf, Karmelo anthony 

For decades, the media and federal agencies have warned Americans that the greatest threat to our homeland is the political right — gun-owning veterans, conservative Christians, anyone who ever voted for President Donald Trump. President Joe Biden once declared that white supremacy is “the single most dangerous terrorist threat” in the nation.

Since Trump’s re-election, the rhetoric has only escalated. Outlets like the Washington Post and the Guardian warned that his second term would trigger a wave of far-right violence.

As Democrats bleed working-class voters and lose control of their base, they’re not moderating. They’re radicalizing.

They were wrong.

The real domestic threat isn’t coming from MAGA grandmas or rifle-toting red-staters. It’s coming from the radical left — the anarchists, the Marxists, the pro-Palestinian militants, and the anti-American agitators who have declared war on law enforcement, elected officials, and civil society.

Willful blindness

On July 4, a group of black-clad terrorists ambushed an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in Alvarado, Texas. They hurled fireworks at the building, spray-painted graffiti, and then opened fire on responding law enforcement, shooting a local officer in the neck. Journalist Andy Ngo has linked the attackers to an Antifa cell in the Dallas area.

Authorities have so far charged 14 people in the plot and recovered AR-style rifles, body armor, Kevlar vests, helmets, tactical gloves, and radios. According to the Department of Justice, this was a “planned ambush with intent to kill.”

And it wasn’t an isolated incident. It’s part of a growing pattern of continuous violent left-wing incidents since December last year.

Monthly attacks

Most notably, in December 2024, 26-year-old Luigi Mangione allegedly gunned down UnitedHealth Group CEO Brian Thompson in Manhattan. Mangione reportedly left a manifesto raging against the American health care system and was glorified by some on social media as a kind of modern Robin Hood.

One Emerson College poll found that 41% of Americans between the ages of 18 and 29 said the murder was “acceptable” or “somewhat acceptable.”

The next month, a man carrying Molotov cocktails was arrested near the U.S. Capitol. He allegedly planned to assassinate Trump-appointed Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and House Speaker Mike Johnson.

In February, the “Tesla Takedown” attacks on Tesla vehicles and dealerships started picking up traction.

In March, a self-described “queer scientist” was arrested after allegedly firebombing the Republican Party headquarters in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Graffiti on the burned building read “ICE = KKK.”

In April, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro’s (D-Pa.) official residence was firebombed on Passover night. The suspect allegedly set the governor’s mansion on fire because of what Shapiro, who is Jewish, “wants to do to the Palestinian people.”

In May, two young Israeli embassy staffers were shot and killed outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C. Witnesses said the shooter shouted “Free Palestine” as he was being arrested. The suspect told police he acted “for Gaza” and was reportedly linked to the Party for Socialism and Liberation.

In June, an Egyptian national who had entered the U.S. illegally allegedly threw a firebomb at a peaceful pro-Israel rally in Boulder, Colorado. Eight people were hospitalized, and an 82-year-old Holocaust survivor later died from her injuries.

That same month, a pro-Palestinian rioter in New York was arrested for allegedly setting fire to 11 police vehicles. In Los Angeles, anti-ICE rioters smashed cars, set fires, and hurled rocks at law enforcement. House Democrats refused to condemn the violence.

RELATED: Democrats unanimously vote against condemning ‘mostly peaceful’ anti-ICE riots

Photo by Barbara Davidson/Getty Images

In Portland, Oregon, rioters tried to burn down another ICE facility and assaulted police officers before being dispersed with tear gas. Graffiti left behind read: “Kill your masters.”

On July 7, a Michigan man opened fire on a Customs and Border Protection facility in McAllen, Texas, wounding two police officers and an agent. Border agents returned fire, killing the suspect.

Days later in California, ICE officers conducting a raid on an illegal cannabis farm in Ventura County were attacked by left-wing activists. One protester appeared to fire at federal agents.

This is not a series of isolated incidents. It’s a timeline of escalation. Political assassinations, firebombings, arson, ambushes — all carried out in the name of radical leftist ideology.

Democrats are radicalizing

This isn’t just the work of fringe agitators. It’s being enabled — and in many cases encouraged — by elected Democrats.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz routinely calls ICE “Trump’s modern-day Gestapo.” Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass attempted to block an ICE operation in her city. Boston Mayor Michelle Wu compared ICE agents to a neo-Nazi group. Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson referred to them as “secret police terrorizing our communities.”

Apparently, other Democratic lawmakers, according to Axios, are privately troubled by their own base. One unnamed House Democrat admitted that supporters were urging members to escalate further: “Some of them have suggested what we really need to do is be willing to get shot.” Others were demanding blood in the streets to get the media’s attention.

A study from Rutgers University and the National Contagion Research Institute found that 55% of Americans who identify as “left of center” believe that murdering Donald Trump would be at least “somewhat justified.”

As Democrats bleed working-class voters and lose control of their base, they’re not moderating. They’re radicalizing. They don’t want the chaos to stop. They want to harness it, normalize it, and weaponize it.

The truth is, this isn’t just about ICE. It’s not even about Trump. It’s about whether a republic can survive when one major party decides that our institutions no longer apply.

Truth still matters. Law and order still matter. And if the left refuses to defend them, then we must be the ones who do.

​Opinion & analysis, Ice, Immigration and customs enforcement, Leftism, Violence, Immigration crisis, Democrats, Karen bass, Michigan, Left-wing violence, Customs and border protection, Terrorism, Political assassination, Tim walz, Michelle wu, Boston, Los angeles, New york city, Axios, Gestapo, National contagion research institute, Rutgers university, Working class voters, Alvarado ice attack, Domestic extremism, Antifa, Illegal aliens, Maga