Rob McCoy, a religious-right pastor-politician based in Southern California, continues to promote the false claim that the presidential election was stolen from former President Donald Trump in battleground states won by President Joe Biden. McCoy appeared on Monday's "Wallbuilders Live," hosted by Christian nationalist "historian" David Barton and his co-host Rick Green.
McCoy is closely aligned with influential right-wing figures, including Christian nationalist political operative David Lane and Turning Point USA founder and Falkirk Center co-founder Charlie Kirk. McCoy resigned his position on the Thousand Oaks City Council earlier this year so he could lead defiance of COVID-19-related restrictions on church gatherings.
On the show, Green, Barton, and McCoy postured as voices of reason and truth in a sea of deception from the left and right, particularly what they called “hopium”—messages from right-wing leaders who assured Trump supporters that he would definitely remain in power, whether through martial law or divine intervention.
But despite portraying himself as a voice of truth, McCoy continued to promote the big lie at the core of the post-election turmoil, including the deadly insurrection at the Capitol. Here’s McCoy speaking with Barton and Green:
And I say to people, yeah, look, we got ripped off in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Georgia, Nevada, Arizona. You know, the election, just in those four counties. You look in Detroit, and you look in the counties in Pennsylvania, and it was unscrupulous. It was evil. It was dirty.
McCoy argued that if the church had been more involved in local politics, it could have kept Trump in power:
This is a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, and it requires participation. And the systems that were put in place to allow the opposition to steal the election in those states happened because of the absence of moral and godly people who would provide a check and balance in regards to that.
McCoy said that people say they want liberty, but “they don’t want it to come at a cost. … They don’t want to have to suffer to obtain it.” McCoy mocked conservatives who think, “Well, I bought a pillow from MyPillow. And I watch Fox News. Why didn’t the president win?”
McCoy talked about the church as ekklesia—a term that dominionists use to describe the church as God’s governing force on Earth. He criticized churches that don’t want to talk about abortion and pastors who stay out of politics and say they stay focused on preaching the Gospel:
And I do that every Sunday. But Jesus didn’t say, ‘Make converts.’ He said, ‘Make disciples.’ And those disciples are people that understand the public square—that the Scriptures speak on capitalism and immigration and transportation and all the issues that we deal with in government. Government is not man's idea. It's God's idea.”
The building in which McCoy’s Godspeak Calvary Chapel congregation meets was bought and renovated for him by Texas fracking billionaire Dan Wilks, who is, with his brother, a mega-funder for religious-right groups and Lane’s political operations. Lane has called McCoy the inspiration for his effort to recruit 1,000 conservative pastors to run for public office; McCoy has been an active participant in events held by Lane’s American Renewal Project to encourage pastors to get their congregations more involved in electing right-wing politicians.
