Bryan Fischer

Fresh from telling his radio audience that they cannot vote for Hillary Clinton because "women should not be entrusted with high political office," Bryan Fischer declared yesterday that Clinton cannot be allowed to become president because she is driven by the "spirit of the Antichrist."

Just like President Obama, Fischer explained, Clinton is "an enemy of religious liberty" who is driven by a "profound anti-Christ impulse."

"The same spirit that will one day animate the Antichrist is the same spirit that is at work in Hillary Clinton," he said. "She opposes Christ, she opposes biblical Christianity, she's hostile to it, she seeks to repress it, she seeks to punish it and she seeks to stifle it. That is the spirit of the Antichrist and it is at work in Hillary Clinton."

"Ladies and gentlemen, hear me when I say this," Fischer continued, "Hillary Clinton is motivated by the spirit of the Antichrist because she is against Christ, she is against Christianity, she is against the free exercise of the Christian faith, she doesn't want the Christian faith to be a part of the public square, to influence public policy in any way, she is against everything that Christianity stands for. She is for same-sex marriage, she is for the promotion of homosexuality, she is against the sanctity of human life, she is against religious liberty ... She is an opponent of all that is good and right and noble."

As we have noted several times before, American Family Radio's Bryan Fischer regularly promotes an entirely incoherent theory about the First Amendment, insisting that its prohibition against an establishment of religion only applies to Congress while also insisting that its prohibition against infringing upon the free exercise of religion applies to just about any government entity.

Fischer made this nonsensical argument against on his radio program today when he praised Joe Kennedy, a former assistant high school football coach who is now suing his school district for firing him for refusing to stop praying with students after games. 

Despite the fact that, time and again, Fischer has insisted that the provisions of the First Amendment only apply to Congress and therefore cannot be violated by any other entity, Fischer bizarrely declared that the school district has violated Kennedy's First Amendment rights.

"Good for you, coach Joe Kennedy," Fischer declared. "He's taking the district to court for violating his First Amendment rights, which is exactly what they've done ... What does the First Amendment say? It says that Congress—and Bremerton [School District,] they interpret that to mean any governmental authority, that would include schools because they're government schools—is not allowed to prohibit the free exercise of religion. What did Bremerton School District do when they told Joe Kennedy, 'You can't pray at midfield after a game'? They prohibited his free exercise of religion! They told him, 'Your constitutional right—even though this is government property and the government is specifically prohibited from infringing on your free exercise rights—we are going to destroy the First Amendment here, doesn't apply in Bremerton, doesn't apply on a football field, you have lost that right. You have not only lost that right, you have lost your job.'"

Fischer's current assertion that Bremerton is violating Kennedy's First Amendment rights directly contradicts his longstanding assertion that only Congress can possibly violate the First Amendment. As he wrote just last year:

The truth is that it is constitutionally and historically impossible for a school to violate the First Amendment. Why? Easy. Because a school is not Congress.

As the very first word in the First Amendment makes clear, the First Amendment applies to Congress and Congress alone. “Congress shall make no law...” The only entity that is restrained by the Founders’ Constitution is Congress. Since Congress is the only entity restrained by the First Amendment, Congress is the only entity that can violate it. 

American Family Radio's Bryan Fischer has an amazing ability to "misremember" history, especially when doing so allows him to conveniently ignore his own well-documented record of unmitigated bigotry.

In the latest example, Fischer dedicated a portion of his radio program yesterday to promoting the upcoming Values Voter Summit, which ended with him recounting that the last time he spoke at the annual event back in 2011, he was denounced from the stage by Mitt Romney, who would go on to secure the Republican presidential nomination:

Our values ennoble the citizen, and they strengthen the nation. We should remember that decency and civility are values too. One of the speakers who will follow me today, has crossed that line I think. Poisonous language does not advance our cause. It has never softened a single heart nor changed a single mind. The blessings of faith carry the responsibility of civil and respectful debate. The task before us is to focus on the conservative beliefs and the values that unite us – let no agenda, narrow our vision or drive us apart.

In Fischer's retelling of the episode, he falsely claimed that Romney attacked him because he had criticized the Romney campaign for hiring a national security and foreign policy spokesman, Richard Grenell, who was openly gay:

In reality, Romney criticized Fischer because of his long history of unapologetic bigotry and not because of the Grenell incident, which didn't occur until months after Romney called him out from the stage. It was, in fact, because Fischer was so outraged by Romney's criticism of him that he waged his one-man war against Grenell in the first place, which ultimately resulted in Grenell resigning from the Romney campaign.

Bryan Fischer kicked off his radio program on Friday with a Bible study on the Book of Revelation, during which he once again warned that "Satan is working overtime" through the LGBT rights community in an effort to impose the Mark of the Beast on Christians.

"This is the Mark of the Beast in our culture right now," Fischer declared. "If you want to know what the Mark of the Beast is today in America, it is the embrace of the homosexual agenda. If you want to buy, if you want to sell, if you want to engage in business, you have to embrace the god of homosexuality, you have got to embrace the agenda of homosexuality or you will not be allowed to buy or sell. That's the Mark of the Beast."

Fischer said that the NBA, in deciding to move the 2017 All-Star Game out of Charlotte in response to a new North Carolina anti-LGBT law, is punishing the state for refusing to "take the Mark of the Beast."

"If you will not take the Mark of the Beast," he said, "that is embrace the homosexual agenda, you will not be able to buy or sell, you will be closed down, you will be shut down, you will be fired, you will be punished."

On his radio program yesterday, Bryan Fischer recounted a debate he had last week on Twitter with Christian Today writer Andrew Walton over Walton's piece criticizing the newly opened Ark Encounter theme park in Kentucky, which was built by the Creationist group Answers in Genesis for the purpose of promoting the organization's fundamentalist view of the Bible.

During his discussion, Fischer took exception to Walton's assertion in his article that Christians "may have diverse opinions on sexual ethics, on life issues, on evolution, on hell, on what role government should play in society, on healthcare, and indeed on science," insisting that, in fact, Christians cannot have opinions on those issues if they differ from Fischer's interpretation of the Bible.

"No, it is not okay for Christians to be all over the map, to have diverse opinions," Fischer insisted. "No, it's not okay. The Bible is abundantly clear about sexual ethics, sex is reserved for marriage, marriage is a union of one man and one woman, homosexuality is a sin, sexual immorality is a sin, et cetera. These things are not ambiguous in the scripture so, no, it's not okay to have diverse opinions on those issues."

"It's not okay to have diverse opinions on life issues," Fischer continued. "It's not okay for Christians to have diverse opinions about evolution."

For years now, American Family Radio host Bryan Fischer has insisted that President Obama does not want Hillary Clinton to succeed him as president and has repeatedly predicted that Obama would order the Justice Department to indict her over her mishandling of email while serving as secretary of state. 

Today, FBI Director James Comey recommended that the Justice Department not indict Clinton over the issue, so naturally Fischer went to work spinning a conspiracy theory on his radio program today, despite the fact that the theory he came up with directly contradicts his previous predictions.

As Fischer sees it, Comey has a reputation as a straight shooter who does things by the book and so he must have been "leaned on" by someone higher up - either by Attorney General Loretta Lynch or by President Obama - in coming to his decision not to recommend an indictment.

Given that Fischer has repeatedly stated that Obama does not want Clinton to become president, it is impossible to understand why he would now be claiming that it was Obama who quashed the indictment. But, for some reason, that is what Fischer is now suggesting, saying that Comey hosted his press conference today because "he wants the American people to know that she is guilty as sin" but that he was pressured into letting her off.

The AFA's Abe Hamilton, who was Fischer's guest on the program today, completely agreed and said that Comey's decision was "strikingly similar" to Chief Justice John Roberts' decision upholding Obamacare in 2015, which some right-wing activists are convinced he handed down only because he was being blackmailed by the Obama administration.

"Somebody is leaning on James Comey," Hamilton said.

Fischer and Hamilton are not the only ones floating this conspiracy theory without a stitch of evidence, as Rick Joyner took to Facebook today to suggest the same thing:

The FBI Director's judgement that Clinton should not be prosecuted was expected by many because everything has been so politicized that almost no one expects justice anymore. There was a misplaced hope in Director Comey like there was in Chief Justice John Roberts in regard to the Obamacare decision. These two incomprehensible decisions felt connected in some ways. No one could make sense out of Chief Justice Robert's decision to say Obamacare was constitutional because it was a tax, which even the Obama Administration refuted. It is likewise hard to figure out why someone as smart as FBI Director Comey would so blatantly contradict himself in the same press conference, and make the call that he did.

Many speculated that the only way Roberts made such a confused decision on Obamacare was that someone threatened him. This seemed feasible with all of the revelations that was then coming out about the info the NSA had been compiling on all Americans. Nothing else seemed to make sense. That is hard to imagine with the Director of the FBI, but in a similar way his decision just did not make sense, especially after his own statement about negligence in this case being a crime too, even if not intentional. How could anyone dispute that there was not at best gross negligence in the careless way Hillary handled classified information? Both of these decisions felt really foul, and somehow they are connected. I don't like conspiracy theories that can't be proven, but something really seemed awry in both of these.

Sunday marked the first anniversary of the Supreme Court's historic marriage equality decision and American Family Radio's Bryan Fischer "honored" it on his radio show today by repeating his assertion that the ruling was the moral equivalent of 9/11.

"That day, June 26, 2015, is a date that will live in infamy," Fischer declared. "Just as the Pearl Harbor date is a date that will live in infamy, so this day in which same-sex marriage was imposed on the United States against the will of the citizens is a date that will live in moral infamy."

"What moral jihadists did on June 26, 2015," he continued, "what they did to the twin pillars of truth and righteousness [is] the same thing that the Muslim jihadists did to the World Trade Center on 9/11. So moral jihadists took down the twin pillars of truth and righteousness just like Muslim jihadists took down the twin towers on 9/11."

On his radio program on Friday, Bryan Fischer took some time out to pat himself on the back for being one of the only people brave enough to admit "the truth" that Adolf Hitler was gay and that "homosexuals helped to form and shape and mold the Nazi party."

The inspiration for this celebration was Jonah Goldberg's appearance on Fox News last week where he asserted that he knows "for a fact that a lot of the founders of the Nazi Party were gays," which Fischer noted is what he has been saying for at least seven years.

Fischer declared that nobody else within the conservative movement has been willing to admit this historical fact because they saw what happened to him when first did so several years back.

"I said that back in 2009, got absolutely hammered, got absolutely blistered," Fischer said, "and I think what happened is people like Jonah Goldberg saw what happened to somebody who was willing to step out and tell the truth about the origins of the Nazi party, that it was rooted in the homosexual movement, homosexual community; it was formed in a gay bar in Munich, most of the officers of the SA, the Stormtroopers, were homosexuals, you had no chance of advancing in the Stormtroopers unless you were a practicing homosexual."

After claiming that the infamous "Night of the Long Knives" was really directed at eliminating Nazi insiders who were about to "out" Hitler to the German public, Fischer declared that he originally made this case back in 2009 and 2010 because the U.S. government was discussing the possible repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell.

"That was the discussion at the time," Fischer said, "what about homosexuality in the military? And my point was very simple: That's been tried. Nazi Germany tried that. How did that experiment work out?"

Fischer's claims about the Nazis are, of course, entirely untrue.

Yesterday, CNN's Anderson Cooper interviewed Florida attorney general Pam Bondi about last weekend's massacre at a gay nightclub in Orland and grilled her about her long history of anti-gay activism. 

Predictably, extremist anti-gay activist Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association was outraged by Cooper's treatment of Bondi (as well as Bondi's poor performance during the interview), so he took it upon himself to answer Cooper's questions on Bondi's behalf on his radio program today.

But before he got to that, Fischer announced that because Cooper is gay, he is "disqualified" from covering any stories having to do with the issue of "the homosexual agenda."

"Anderson Cooper, who is an open, admitted homosexual ... therefore ought to recuse himself from any story like this," Fischer declared. "He has no business trying to do journalism on an issue as fraught with emotion as the homosexual agenda. He's disqualified from providing any kind of objective journalistic treatment of that topic."