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By Flynn Nicholls
US News Reporter
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MAGA pastor and evangelical leader Lance Wallnau has accused Kamala Harris of using "witchcraft" during Tuesday's presidential debate.
In a series of posts on X (formerly Twitter), Wallnau claimed that the vice president used supernatural manipulation to gain the upper hand in her combative showdown with the former president.
"When I say 'witchcraft,' I am talking about what happened tonight. Occult-empowered deception, manipulation, and domination," Wallnau wrote early Wednesday morning, following the debate.
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Wallnau, a prominent figure in the pro-Trump evangelical movement, has long portrayed the former president as a divinely chosen leader tasked with saving America from what he describes as a spiritual and political decline.
Harris' debate strategy and the behavior of the debate's two ABC News moderators, who fact-checked Trump five times, were not merely political tactics, Wallnau said, but part of a deeper, more sinister effort to deceive the public and control the debate's outcome.
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He also accused the debate moderators of colluding with Harris' campaign, writing, "That's what ABC pulled off as moderators, and Kamala's script handlers set up the kill box. One-sided questions and fact-checking sealed the box. Witchcraft."
Later that evening, Wallnau expanded on his allegations, writing that Harris had been given free rein to spread misinformation without being challenged.
"She knew she could speak 20 lies about Trump and not be contradicted. That was the arrangement," he wrote in a second post. "And that's why I call it witchcraft, because it has the effect of planting and reinforcing thoughts in the mind of the listener that defiles perspective. This makes it easier to manipulate people."
Newsweek has contacted Harris's campaign via email for comment.
As one of the earliest advocates of the idea that Trump was "God's chosen," Wallnau first gained national attention in 2016 when he compared Trump to Cyrus, a biblical figure who was chosen by God to free the Jewish people from captivity.
Wallnau's influence has only grown since then, with his messages blending politics and religion into a unified call for action among his followers.
He is a leader of the "Seven Mountain Mandate," which says Christians are called to dominate seven key areas of society: government, family, religion, arts and entertainment, media, education and business.
Wallnau's influence among evangelical Trump supporters is significant. Through his Courage Tour and social media presence, he has been mobilizing Christian voters across the country, particularly in battleground states like Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, where his events draw large crowds.
Most commentators described Tuesday's debate as a victory for Harris.
Newsweek conducted a reader poll in which 66.7 percent of the 8,000 respondents said Harris had won, while 33.2 percent said Trump was the winner. Observers contacted by Newsweek also considered it a Harris victory (nine chose Harris, four said it was a tie, and just one said Trump won). Betting odds markets flipped in Harris' favor following the debate.
In addition, several political science, debate and government scholars told Newsweek that Harris performed better than Trump.
After Trump's lackluster debate performance, some MAGA supporters online began promoting an unsubstantiated claim that ABC had given the questions to Harris in advance.
The controversy escalated online when a self-proclaimed whistleblower used the X (formerly Twitter) account @DocNetyoutube, a self-described MAGA supporter, to say an affidavit alleging the debate was rigged will be released.
"I will be releasing an affidavit from an ABC whistleblower regarding the debate. I have just signed a non-disclosure agreement with the attorney of the whistleblower," the account posted on X.
Conservative accounts such as @MilaLovesJoe, @ChuckCallesto and @RealBenGeller, which have a combined following of over 1 million, quickly amplified the whistleblower's story, spreading it across their platforms. Without evidence, they insisted that the Democratic nominee's campaign was handed sample questions "essentially the same" as those used in the debate, along with promises that Trump would be "fact-checked."
Newsweek reached out by email to ABC News on Thursday for comment regarding these allegations.
Trump told Fox & Friends on Wednesday that he "probably" would not agree to more debates but would consider debates moderated by Sean Hannity, Jesse Watters and Laura Ingraham, all of whom are Trump loyalists.
Update, 9/13/24 at 11:24 a.m. ET: Additional context was added.
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