The full context of the Tucker-Cruz confrontation makes it even worse

So many people, including myself … are sharing this very telling, quite humiliating exchange between Texas Senator Ted Cruz and Tucker Carlson, on Tucker’s podcast:

Indeed, this was an utterly humiliating exercise for Cancun Cruz. But I listened to the whole, nearly two hour interview, during which Tucker and Curz agreed on how much they hate Democrats, particularly the elected mayors of Washington D.C. and Los Angeles, the governor of California, and on how much they love guns and the NRA and more …. right up until the moment they started to disagree on Israel and Iran.

And while everyone is focusing on how Tucker cooked Ted regarding his lack of basic knowledge about Iran, which he wants the U.S. to help attack, I would argue that not enough attention is being paid to other parts of the interview, including this part, in which Cruz explains why he ran for the Senate with the goal of being the foremost supporter of Israel:

To summarize … Ted Cruz believes the modern state of Israel is the exact same thing as the Israel as described in the Bible … um … WHAT!!!??? That’s the basis for supporting a foreign government’s aggression toward its neighbors without even raising a question, as a United States Senator???

To me, that’s even worse than Cruz’s ignorance of the country and the region. It’s evidence that his foreign policy ideas are driven not just by the donations AIPAC shovels his way, but also by a deep and vehement Christian nationalism and dispensationalism. What is Dispensationalism, you ask? Here’s a good, working definition:

A dispensation is a way of ordering things—an administration, a system, or a management. In theology, a dispensation is the divine administration of a period of time; each dispensation is a divinely appointed age. Dispensationalism is a theological system that recognizes these ages ordained by God to order the affairs of the world. Dispensationalism has two primary distinctives: 1) a consistently literal interpretation of Scripture, especially Bible prophecy, and 2) a view of the uniqueness of Israel as separate from the Church in God’s program. Classical dispensationalism identifies seven dispensations in God’s plan for humanity.

And this is why it matters in modern day Republican politics:

When Israel’s former ambassador to the US said his country should worry less about what American Jews think and concentrate on Christian evangelicals as the “backbone” of support for the Jewish state, he had in mind the Texas megachurch pastor John Hagee.

Hagee founded Christians United for Israel (CUFI), a group that claims 11 million members, who have had a significant influence on Republican party politics and in hardening Washington’s already strong support for Israel.

Now, listen, if you would, to the interview in total, including starting at 27 minutes in, the leadup to the conversation about Israel and Iran. It’s a wild, wild conversation … which includes Cruz attempting to prove, with zero evidence, that Iran has tried to kill Donald Trump … despite the two men who shot at Trump being white, Christian, American registered Republicans with zero ties to Tehran.

President Donald Trump made no secret of his desire to keep Hagee and Christian Zionist voters happy as a key part of his base by abandoning even the pretense that the US was a neutral player in resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Former South Carolina governor and current White House hopeful Nikki Haley recognised Hagee’s power within the most important religious bloc of Republican voters and their influence over political priorities, from anti-abortion laws to Israel policy, when she invited him to give the invocation at her presidential campaign launch last month.

“Pastor Hagee, I still say I want to be you when I grow up,” she enthused.

Left largely unmentioned by Haley and Hagee’s Israeli allies were his antisemitic views, including calling Hitler a “half-breed Jew” who was sent by God to drive the Jewish people to Israel. He has also suggested that Jews brought centuries of persecution on themselves by disobeying God.

None of that discouraged Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, from addressing a CUFI summit in Washington in 2019.

“Pastor Hagee, I want to thank you for your enduring, tremendous support. For decades you’ve been leading the effort to strengthen support for Israel from within the Christian community,” he said.

Israel’s ambassador to Washington, Ron Dermer, was not alone in his view about the significance of Christian evangelical support as American Jews have grown increasingly critical of Israel’s drift ever further to the right.

Trump’s ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, said that evangelical Christians “support Israel with much greater fervour and devotion than many in the Jewish community”. Christian Zionists also overwhelmingly vote Republican whereas polls show that most American Jews do not.

The result of that support, and its impact on Republican primary elections in particular, can be seen in major policy shifts including Trump’s decision to move the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, a political statement Christian Zionists spent years agitating for. Hagee gave a benediction at the opening in 2018.

But it also plays out in local politics, including the proliferation of state laws to punish support for the Palestinian movement to boycott Israel and in obliging Republican primary candidates to pledge their unwavering support for the Jewish state.

The number of white evangelical Christians is in decline, falling from about a quarter of Americans in 2006 to 14% today. But even as their numbers fall, they remain the most politically influential of religious blocs.

Debra Shushan, policy director of J Street, a group founded to promote “pro-Israel, pro-peace” policies that opinion polls show are backed by a majority of American Jews, said that influence has distorted US policy toward Israel.

“Christian Zionism, particularly of the variety that has become predominant among American evangelical Christians in recent decades, which sees Jewish control and settlement in the entire land of Israel as a requirement for fulfilling their end-times prophecies, has been extremely detrimental to US politics, and US policy toward Israel,” she said.

“If you compare evangelical Christians in terms of their numbers to Jewish Americans, you can see why evangelical Christians and Christian Zionists as a group are able to have an enormous impact, especially when their support is disproportionately in favour of one political party. An organisation like CUFI now claims over 11 million members. Just to put that in perspective, CUFI has more members than there are Jews in America.”

Bottom line: Christian nationalists don’t care about “the Jews,” to use Ted’s sneering term. They care about bringing about the End Times, using Israel as a tool. Note that Ted Cruz opposed re-engaging militarily in Iraq, during the Obama administration; and I’ll note that Iraq’s only relationship to the Christian nationalist worldview is that it is located near the Tigris and Euphrates, and it was not in an open conflict with Israel. And his reasoning for opposing intervention in Iraq was telling:

The Texas Republican did not rule out some sort of military intervention in Iraq but said anything that President Barack Obama decides, it must be in the best interests of the U.S. rather than for Iraq.

And yet now, he is gung ho on us getting into a war with Iran, despite it not even being in retaliation to an as-yet unproven Iranian “plot” to assassinate Trump??? What is happening???

So now with that context, listen if you will, to the full interview:

And let me leave you with this question: what evidence is there … and please share it with me if you know where it exists … that Iran has any intention whatsoever to attack the United States, such that it makes sense for us to go to war with them? Is there any at all???

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