Faith and Action's Rob Schenck has never been shy about exploiting his interactions, no matter how fleeting, with Washington DC's power-brokers in order to convince his supporters that he is actually influential and that their donations aren't going to waste. In fact, his willingness to dish about his run-ins with legislators is one of the main reasons we monitor him - no other right-wing activist that we know of is as eager to openly share his strategies and activities with the general public.
This tendency of Schneck's should probably be kept in mind by any public officials who happen to meet or otherwise come into contact with him because it is entirely liklely that whatever they say to him will eventually be made public in a form much like this press release he just issued alleging that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has confessed to him that there is indeed a "war on Christmas":
Schenck is a missionary to elected and appointed officials on Capitol Hill and was a VIP guest at the recent US Capitol Christmas Tree Lighting ceremony held on the Capitol's West Lawn, near the presidential inaugural platform that is under construction.
Following the ceremony that included traditional Christmas carols played by a US Air Force band, Rev. Schenck thanked Speaker Pelosi for keeping, as he said it, "Christ-mas" at the US Capitol, emphasizing "Christ." Speaker Pelosi politely acknowledged the remark, then pursued Rev. Schenck to tell him she had been "mugged" for doing so.
Rev. Schenck commented, "At first I didn't understand what Mrs. Pelosi was saying, so I simply nodded and thanked her again, but she repeated it emphatically. I realized the Speaker was saying she had paid a serious price politically for allowing the Christmas celebration to go on. She obviously took some political heat for it. For that, Nancy Pelosi deserves to be commended, and I made sure I did so."
Schenck also said, "The fact that Nancy Pelosi said she was assailed for allowing a Christmas observance at the US Capitol confirms the war against Christmas is not a figment of the so-called religious right's imagination. If one of the most liberal, arguably left-wing political leaders in our country, the woman third in succession to the presidency, is getting pummeled for lighting a Christmas tree and allowing Christmas carols on the lawn of the Capitol, that would qualify as a war against Christmas."
Obviously, it is impossible to know just what Pelosi meant - even Schenck doesn't seem to know - but that hasn't stopped him from turning a passing remark into a full-blown press release and using Pelosi's words to further his own agenda.
