Fox News political analyst Guy Benson is receiving congratulations from across conservative media after announcing the birth of his daughter, Madison Halsey.

“She’s here, and she’s perfect,” Benson wrote in a post that quickly racked up more than 10,000 likes.

“We are blessed and overjoyed to welcome Madison Halsey into the world and into our family. Our hearts are filled to the brim. A baby girl. We are just so thankful.”

However, BlazeTV host Allie Beth Stuckey doesn’t share his excitement.

“You’ve heard my spiel on surrogacy a lot, but when we create these children, especially in this situation where you are buying the eggs from one woman, you are renting the womb from another woman,” she says.

“So you’re taking a child away from their biological mother, you are placing them in an unrelated woman whose smell and touch and heartbeat and body they get to know, they call home for nine months,” she continues.

“And then you immediately take that child after birth away from the only home, the only smell, the only regulator, the only woman they have ever known and away from the biological mom with whom they share half of their DNA. We are treating that child worse than we treat kittens and puppies,” she adds.

For kittens and puppies, the natural bond between a mother and her litter is respected.

“But for some reason, when it comes to human babies who are much more fragile, who are much less resilient, and of course as Christians, we believe are made in God’s image and so matter infinitely more than a cat or a dog, we say, ‘Eh, it’s probably fine,’” Stuckey says.

“It is the prioritization of adult wants over children’s needs,” she adds.

But it’s not just purposely taking children away from their biological mother that bothers Stuckey, noting that the entire process has “physical consequences for the child.”

“It’s much more risky for the embryo. It’s much more risky, or riskier, for the baby as well during conception, during transfer and implantation, during gestation,” she explains.

“But then of course, you’re creating this emotional and psychological, physiological risk too,” she continues, before playing a TikTok video of a man in a homosexual relationship claiming his son cries for his “mommy” despite never knowing his mother.

“This is very common. This is natural. This is instinctive. Somewhere deep inside, we want to know where we came from. We want our mom. That does not mean that two men who are raising a child don’t love their child,” she says.

“It means that they’re not a mom. You can be a really good dad, but you will never be a mom,” she adds.

Want more from Allie Beth Stuckey?

To enjoy more of Allie’s upbeat and in-depth coverage of culture, news, and theology from a Christian, conservative perspective, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

​Allie beth stuckey, Christians, Fox news, Guy benson, Surrogacy, Blazetv show, Lgbt 

Jimmy Carter did more damage to American foreign policy in one weekend than most diplomats manage in a career.

In June 1994, President Bill Clinton sent Carter (no relation) to Pyongyang as a private citizen, with no authority to negotiate or speak for the U.S. government. Two days later, Carter cut a deal anyway. Then he called CNN before he called the White House. Clinton learned that his own North Korea policy had changed by watching television.

Fleitz has written the best kind of policy book: one grounded in the record, animated by firsthand knowledge, and confident enough to let readers reach the obvious conclusion.

That episode, recounted on page 34 of Frederick H. Fleitz’s new book, “North Korea, Nuclear Brinkmanship, and the Oval Office,” makes up the best two pages in the book. It also contains the clearest explanation of why the book deserves attention.

Fleitz spent more than two decades inside the machinery of American national security policy — at the CIA, State Department, House Intelligence Committee, and National Security Council. He was in the room, or close enough to it, for much of what he describes. This is not a book assembled from newspaper clippings. Fleitz names names, places officials on opposing sides of consequential fights, and lets the record judge them.

The Carter episode establishes the pattern Fleitz traces across three decades. North Korea manufactures a crisis. Washington sends someone to talk. Pyongyang extracts a concession. The concession is celebrated as a “breakthrough.” North Korea breaks the agreement once the cameras leave. Then the cycle begins again.

Why did it continue under presidents of both parties? Because it worked.

Fleitz does not spare the Clinton administration. He describes the 1994 Agreed Framework — the deal Carter set in motion — as a bad bargain from the start. The administration called it a “framework” rather than an “agreement,” he argues, to avoid the Senate ratification a treaty would have required. Pyongyang received two light-water reactors and years of fuel oil. Washington received a promise to surrender spent fuel rods that never arrived.

The Bush years receive the same treatment. Fleitz recounts envoy Chris Hill dismissing intelligence about North Korea’s secret uranium-enrichment program. Dick Cheney later told journalist James Rosen that Hill was “deceitful, perfectly prepared to lie to the president.” Hill’s reply — “I’m not Richard Nixon” — is the kind of detail that makes an insider’s account worth reading.

RELATED: Nukes by the numbers: A problem we can’t wish away

Kim Jae-Hwan/SOPA Images/LightRocket/Getty Images

Fleitz is writing about policy, but he understands that policy is made by people with ambitions, loyalties, grudges, and blind spots. His book is not a dry institutional history. It is a fight among real officials over real consequences.

The 2007 destruction of Syria’s North Korean-built reactor at al-Kibar receives similarly careful treatment. Fleitz reports that the Bush administration tried to keep Israel’s strike hidden from Congress — a detail that reveals as much about Washington’s instinct for secrecy as it does about North Korea’s proliferation network.

The Trump chapters give the book its greatest energy because Fleitz supports his case with numbers rather than adjectives. North Korea tested no missiles in 2018, only a handful of short-range missiles in 2019, and no intercontinental ballistic missiles until 2022. That year, under President Joe Biden, North Korea set a single-year record of roughly 165 missile launches.

Fleitz also details the February 2018 sanctions package, the toughest imposed on Pyongyang to that point, and Trump’s warning that “phase two” could become “very, very rough” if sanctions failed. Whatever one thinks of the rhetoric, it reads as the voice of a president wielding leverage rather than asking politely for cooperation.

Fleitz states his central conclusion plainly: North Korea respects strength and exploits weakness.

In his telling, every bad deal in the book was struck when an American president negotiated from a position of distraction, exhaustion, or political vulnerability: the 1994 Agreed Framework under Clinton, the near-deal at the end of George W. Bush’s second term, the Iran nuclear agreement under Barack Obama, and a reported secret arrangement with Iran under Biden.

The one moment Pyongyang backed off and came to the table, Fleitz argues, came in 2018, when the regime confronted a president threatening its destruction rather than pleading for another agreement.

RELATED: The future of warfare is not what you think

STR/KCNA/KNS/AFP/Getty Images

That thesis will invite argument, as it should. Trump did not eliminate North Korea’s nuclear arsenal, and the regime remains dangerous. But Fleitz makes a persuasive case that pressure created negotiating space while accommodation repeatedly rewarded bad behavior.

The lesson extends beyond North Korea. China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran are drawing closer. Washington still faces the temptation to mistake talks for progress, signatures for compliance, and diplomatic activity for strategic success.

For that reason, “North Korea, Nuclear Brinkmanship, and the Oval Office” is not merely a history of failed negotiations. It is a warning about a pattern that American policymakers keep repeating.

Fleitz has written the best kind of policy book: one grounded in the record, animated by firsthand knowledge, and confident enough to let readers examine the evidence and reach the obvious conclusion. Weakness does not moderate regimes such as North Korea. It teaches them what they can take next.

​Bill clinton, Dick cheney, Jimmy carter, Opinion & analysis, State department, Joe biden, Donald trump, George w. bush, North korea, Nuclear weapons, Diplomacy, Kim jong un, Frederick fleitz, America first, Foreign policy 

Generative AI has gained all kinds of new skills over the years, one of which is permanence, or the ability to remember details from past conversations. These days, your favorite AI platform may know a lot about you, such as your occupation, hobbies, and likes/dislikes. But what would happen if your AI chatbot had its memory hijacked to steal your data? That’s exactly what can happen with this latest fatal flaw that was discovered in some AI platforms.

This concerning trick was first uncovered by a research team at New Mexico State University. Dubbed GhostWriter, it has the ability to use hidden prompts to carry out tasks without the user’s knowledge. These can be innocuous, like capturing information currently saved in the clipboard on your device, or they can be malicious, like logging into your bank account and routing funds to an external bank, as well as stealing files, passwords, and other personal information.

It lies dormant for weeks, months, or even years.

According to the researchers, GhostWriter works in two stages:

First, it requires a prompt injection, where the attacker leaves a command for the AI to carry out a specific task when the user writes an unrelated prompt. In this case, the attacker could tell the AI to look for its user to type a certain keyword or phrase to trigger the hidden command. The second stage is activation. In this phase, the user unknowingly initiates the GhostWriter command, prompting the AI agent to carry out the intentional task the user requested, as well as the hidden task the attacker requested. At this point, the AI completes both tasks as instructed.

From the AI agent’s point of view, the tasks were both valid commands, and it will complete them to the best of its ability. From the user’s point of view, he often won’t know that a secondary task was carried out on his device, leaving him unaware of any malicious activity connected to his account. And for the attacker, he receives the stolen data with little fanfare.

RELATED: Protect yourself now from Apple’s latest privacy fail

itsarasak thithuekthak/Getty Images

What makes GhostWriter especially dangerous is that it’s not a virus or a hack in itself. It’s simply a tweak to the AI’s memory — a simple hidden command to do something its original user didn’t intend for it to do, nor could the user know to issue his own command to stop the act.

GhostWriter is also persistent, meaning that it can’t be overridden or erased as long as the potential victim is unaware it exists. Instead, it lies dormant for weeks, months, or even years until the right user prompt triggers the command that causes the malicious activity to be carried out.

Now, the good news

If there’s any silver lining, it’s the fact that GhostWriter largely affects agentic AI, or agents. Most AI platforms on the market today — including ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Grok — are all simple chatbots that require human input to carry out tasks. That means for most casual users, GhostWriter shouldn’t pose a threat to their personal information.

That said, while AI agents are still quite rare, many of the top AI companies in the world are scrambling to build functional versions to carry out work projects, complete personal tasks, and more. NVIDIA, a hardware leader in the space, wishes to outfit companies with enterprise AI that can work alongside (and even replace) human employees. Then there’s Google, which wants to load an agentic version of Gemini into Android devices called Gemini Intelligence. Although agents are scarce today, all the major AI platforms are working hard to make agents ubiquitous in the next five years or less.

As for those who do rely on agentic AI today, the New Mexico State University researchers believe that Agentic Memory Sentry, a defense system that uses refined memory saving and retrieval mechanisms to lower the likelihood of a successful GhostWriter attack, is the best way to thwart potential attacks, though even this method isn’t perfect yet. Ultimately, users will either have to trust agentic AI with these built-in risks, or avoid it altogether. I know which option I’ll pick.

​Tech, Security, Ai, Data, Privacy 

As anti-Jewish rhetoric gains traction in some corners of the political right, BlazeTV host Allie Beth Stuckey says the church can no longer afford to stay silent about what she calls “Israel derangement syndrome.”

“The Israel derangement syndrome, the Jewish derangement syndrome that has infected the minds of so many people, that they see Jewish people behind every closed door, that they’re behind every conspiracy, that they’re pulling the strings of power in every single direction, and that everything, somehow every tragedy, every injustice comes back to Israel, that is just beyond the pale,” Stuckey says.

“That is beyond logic. That is beyond reason. I think that there is something spiritual there because we see that same pattern over and over again in so many cultures throughout history and that is anti-Christian,” she continues.

This “Jewish derangement syndrome,” Stuckey says, has “blinded them to reality.”

“Scripture gives us no reason whatsoever to sever Christianity from its Jewish roots. Jesus came as Israel’s Messiah, the fulfillment of the law and the prophets. And the gospel came, according to Romans 1:16, to the Jew first and also to the Greek,” she explains.

“Christianity, it is absolutely true and inarguable, is rooted in God’s covenant with Israel, which Christ fulfilled,” she continues.

“Jesus was born under the Jewish law given to Moses in the Old Testament and came to those who were under the law, to Jews. That was His primary mission field. That’s what He reiterated over and over again,” she adds.

What those with “Israel derangement syndrome” are attempting to do is separate Christianity from Judaism when the Bible makes clear that it’s impossible.

“You cannot when you serve a Jewish savior and a God who does not go back on His promises,” Stuckey says.

“One plan of salvation through Jesus Christ for Jews and Gentiles and every single person. That does not negate the very real Jewish context, Jewish history, Jewish principles that are shared because of the biblical canon, because of the history of who God actually is,” she explains.

Stuckey also points out that many detractors claim that we don’t have Judeo-Christian roots because our founding fathers were not Jewish.

“A lot of the people I see saying that are what you call ‘trad Cath.’ A lot of the people I see pushing back against this Judeo-Christian terminology moniker are Catholic themselves. So if we are going to say we can’t call it Judeo-Christian because the founders weren’t Jewish … we’re also not going to call it Catholic Christian because the founders weren’t Catholic,” she says.

“When people are saying Judeo-Christian, they’re not saying that some of the founders were Jewish. They were saying, ‘We have these shared principles of people being made by a God whose power and knowledge transcends ours,’” she adds.

Want more from Allie Beth Stuckey?

To enjoy more of Allie’s upbeat and in-depth coverage of culture, news, and theology from a Christian, conservative perspective, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

​Allie beth stuckey, Founding fathers, Israel, Jesus, Christianity, Judeo-christian, Blazetv show 

“Two Americas” may be the most exhausted phrase in American political discourse. We have had two Americas divided by race, class, geography, religion, education, television network, and presidential preference.

Now we have two Americas divided by Anthony Fauci.

Six years after the pandemic began, America still cannot agree on what happened, who failed, or what accountability would require.

In one, Fauci is a criminal who helped finance dangerous research, concealed what he knew about the origins of COVID-19, misled Congress, and used the authority of science to protect himself and the institutions he led from public scrutiny. That’s my America. I suspect it’s yours, too.

In the other, Fauci is a secular saint: a brave physician who guided the nation through catastrophe while enduring abuse from Donald Trump, Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.), vaccine skeptics, and assorted right-wing maniacs like us.

Fauci’s appearance before the Senate Homeland Security Committee on Wednesday did nothing to bridge the divide. Fauci invoked the Fifth Amendment over 100 times rather than answer questions about the pandemic and its origins. Paul responded by announcing plans to seek a contempt resolution.

One America heard a confession. The other witnessed a show trial.

Nobody changed his mind. I doubt anyone could.

Six years after the pandemic began, America still cannot agree on what happened, who failed, or what accountability would require. Some people would rather forget about the whole thing and move on. A proper reckoning would demand some agreement about which questions may be asked, what evidence would count, and what findings might alter anyone’s judgment.

We don’t even have that much.

Was the pandemic a natural disaster, a laboratory accident, a bioweapon test, or the product of scientific ambition compounded by bureaucratic negligence and ineptitude? Were school closures ever justified? How much did masks help? Which restrictions saved lives? Which merely demonstrated official power? When did caution become coercion? When did uncertainty become dogma?

RELATED: Saint Anthony Fauci’s index of forbidden questions

Nyia Sissac/Washington Post/Getty Images

Even asking some of those questions still sounds incriminating to one America and deranged to the other.

I know something about the private cost of that division.

An old friend from college — my first real editor, in fact — essentially ended our friendship during the first year of the pandemic. The dispute was not over anything I had written. It was over work I had published at another publication.

One of our senior contributors was among the first writers I knew to challenge the official COVID narrative in a smart, sustained way. She questioned social distancing, masking, and the categorical dismissal of treatments such as ivermectin. My friend believed I was terribly irresponsible for continuing to publish her.

I have no regrets about doing so.

Publishing an argument is not the same as certifying every claim in it, much less demanding that readers accept it. Editors are supposed to permit serious challenges to official consensus, especially during an emergency when government claims carry extraordinary consequences.

I have spent most of my adult life in the commentary business. I make an argument. The reader judges it. If it persuades, fine. If it doesn’t, so it goes. I do not lose sleep because somebody disagrees with me. A great many people do.

That arrangement collapsed during COVID. Disagreement became evidence of moral defect. Publishing skepticism was treated not as an editorial judgment but as complicity in harm.

My friend also insisted that Trump was “100% responsible” for the disease spreading to the United States because he had failed to quarantine airline passengers arriving from China in early 2020.

His certainty struck me more than the accusation itself. One hundred percent left no room for the Chinese government, international travel, public health agencies, state officials, ordinary human behavior, or plain bad luck, let alone malice aforethought.

I tried to extend an olive branch. I suggested that we discuss it over a meal, as we had talked politics, books, ideas, and life many times during a friendship spanning more than 30 years.

He said that wouldn’t be possible because of the prevailing restrictions on social gatherings.

The policy dispute had cracked the friendship. The rule supplied the reason we could not repair the rift.

Several months later, I wrote in an email:

I have been thinking a lot about the stressors of this year and of the past few years and of the past several months especially. What I wanted to tell you is how much I value our friendship of more than 30 years. My hope is that when everything settles down, whenever that may be, you and I can sit down and have a proper conversation. I hope that history matters and I hope that goodwill prevails. And I hope you know how grateful I am to you.

He never replied.

We’ve exchanged perfunctory birthday wishes since then. That’s about all. I don’t dwell on it. But I thought of him this week now that Fauci is once again a hot topic.

I miss my friend as I miss my father, who died in 2017.

The losses are not identical, obviously. Dad can’t return. My friend could. But both men belonged to the architecture of my life. My friend knew earlier versions of me that few living people remember. He helped form the writer and editor I became.

RELATED: Reactions pour in after Fauci pleads the 5th over 100 times

Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

COVID reportedly killed more than a million Americans (though I’m well aware that number is disputed). It also damaged and destroyed things nobody considered at the time: friendships, marriages, churches, businesses, childhoods, trust in physicians, trust in institutions, and what was left of the habit of regarding political opponents as fellow citizens capable of error rather than enemies guilty of unspeakable crimes.

No Senate committee could possibly tally those losses.

A couple of weeks ago, I had dinner with a prominent historian at the University of California. I lamented how difficult it will be for anyone to write a proper history of COVID.

“We won’t write it,” he told me. “Our kids will.”

Thirty years from now, the central figures won’t be around to defend themselves, polish their reputations, withhold documents, or dominate television. The pandemic may finally cease to function as a referendum on Trump, Biden, Fauci, vaccines, masks, and the moral worth of one’s neighbors.

The historians of 2056 may possess evidence we do not have and distance we cannot manufacture. They may uncover crimes. They may vindicate some officials now despised and condemn others now celebrated.

More likely, I suspect, they will describe institutions operating under fear and uncertainty, staffed by fallible people who confused authority with knowledge, consensus with truth, and self-protection with the public good.

A proper history will resist the comforting simplicity of saints and criminals. It will distinguish honest mistakes from deception, emergency measures from deliberate bureaucratic overreach, useful medicine from extravagant promises, and legitimate skepticism from opportunistic horse hockey.

It will also have to account for us.

Why did so many Americans become so certain? Why did we turn temporary policies into permanent judgments of character? Why did we allow disagreements over a virus to decide whom we would trust, whom we would shun, and which friendships we were willing to sacrifice?

Our children may answer those questions better than we can.

By then, maybe the two Americas will have become one country again — or at least two Americas capable of sitting down together for a meal. I’m not optimistic, but I’m hopeful.

​Anthony fauci, Congressional testimony, Two americas, Official covid narrative, Covid, Trump, Vaccines, Pandemic, Wuhan lab, Opinion & analysis 

I enjoy ironing. Before you summon men in white coats carrying large butterfly nets, let me explain.

My mother taught all of us to iron. My father was a military man who expected his children never to leave the house wrinkled or rumpled. He certainly never did.

Caregivers live among things we cannot control, repair, or explain. Ironing allows me to direct some of that tension toward something useful and within reach.

For years, ironing was simply practical. Dry-cleaning bills add up, and we now live more than 50 miles from the nearest cleaner.

Over time, however, the chore became something more.

For four decades, I have watched my wife endure extreme chronic pain, scores of operations, and more months in hospital rooms than I care to count. During those stays, I noticed something small but measurable: Gracie rested better when the bed had fresh linens.

Clean, tightly drawn sheets and a fresh pillowcase did not relieve her pain or repair her body. They settled her. They softened the edges of a brutal experience.

Hospitals necessarily focus on medications, procedures, vital signs, and lab results. Fresh linens can slide down the list.

After hospital stays dating to the Reagan administration, I learned where the clean linens were kept and helped myself. If a sheet touched the floor or a pillowcase looked tired, I replaced it and dropped the used linens into the nylon laundry bag found in every room.

The improvement was never dramatic. Fresh sheets did not erase Gracie’s pain. But her body relaxed, and her breathing settled.

In a room governed by suffering, even modest comfort deserved attention.

One day at home, I saw the sheets in a basket beside the ironing board and thought, “Why not?”

By the way, caregiving involves a great deal of laundry. Just saying.

I began ironing Gracie’s pillowcases and praying over them. Then I tackled the sheets, including the fitted ones, which should qualify as an advanced degree. I pressed her nightgowns and hung them where she could reach them from her wheelchair. I ironed her blouses so they would be smooth and ready to wear.

With a Bluetooth earpiece, I return listeners’ calls, conduct media interviews, take audio courses, and talk theology with pastors who tutor me — all while ironing.

Laundry does not steal time from my work. It helps me focus.

RELATED: The new kid in the waiting room

Tuned_In/Getty Images

None of this solves the larger problem. I cannot take away Gracie’s pain, reverse the damage to her body, or make her legs grow back.

But I can make the bed.

Caregivers live among things we cannot control, repair, or explain. Ironing allows me to direct some of that tension toward something useful and within reach.

When I cannot bring order to the crisis, I can bring order to the linen closet.

A pressed pillowcase will not cure chronic pain, but it may help someone rest while enduring it.

Scripture presses the matter further.

At the Transfiguration, Christ’s clothes became “shining, exceedingly white, like snow, such as no launderer on earth can whiten them” (Mark 9:3). Paul writes that Christ will present the church to Himself as “a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing” (Ephesians 5:27).

Evidently, God likes clean laundry.

But the spotless bride will not stand before Christ because she finally scrubbed away every stain and pressed out every wrinkle herself. She will stand there because Christ loved her and gave Himself for her.

He does what no launderer on earth can do. He cleanses His people and clothes them in a righteousness they did not produce.

For those of us facing stains we cannot remove and damage we cannot undo, that is no small promise.

Every piece of laundry I press reminds me of that greater work.

Heat and pressure smooth the fabric beneath my hands. Yet even the crispest sheet will wrinkle again. The pillowcase will be soiled. The hamper will fill. By next week, I will repeat the work.

Christ’s cleansing does not fail. His atoning work does not need repeating.

RELATED: How a psychic, New Age hippie led me to Catholicism

Roger Hutchings/In Pictures Ltd./Corbis/Getty Images

One day, there will be no nylon bags filled with dirty hospital linens carrying the evidence of another person’s suffering.

There will be no hospitals.

The redeemed will stand clothed in white, in the brilliant righteousness of Christ. Nothing will stain it. Nothing will wrinkle it.

Until then, suffering remains, and so does laundry.

Each time I unfold the ironing board, I am reminded that the small relief I can offer points beyond itself to the complete redemption Christ has promised.

One day, the ironing board will be put away forever.

Until then, with a nod to the apostle Paul, I press on.

And before you ask, I iron only for Gracie.

​Chronic pain, Clean laundry, Hospital stays, Ironing, Caregiving, Caregivers, Christ, Opinion & analysis 

Florida deputies had their hands full after getting a call about a suspicious person in a grocery store parking lot Tuesday evening.

The Hillsborough Sheriff’s Office said deputies responded after 6:30 p.m. to a Publix in Lutz after receiving reports about a male looking into vehicles throughout the parking lot.

‘I mean, who doesn’t keep a crowbar in their buttocks?’

When deputies attempted to investigate, 22-year-old Gonzalo Cabrera refused to identify himself, resisted deputies’ attempts to detain him, and struck a deputy while attempting to flee, officials said.

The sheriff’s office said the suspect was found armed with suspected burglary tools.

Even after being taken to the ground — and while in handcuffs — officials said Cabrera continued resisting and even reached for a crowbar concealed in his waistband.

Bodycam video shows deputies grabbing the crowbar, pulling it away from the suspect’s hands, and throwing it to the parking lot surface.

Cabrera was arrested and faces multiple charges, including battery on a law enforcement officer, resisting officer with violence, loitering or prowling, possession of burglary tools, trespass on property other than structure or conveyance, and disorderly conduct, officials said.

RELATED: Video: Crooks plow car through jewelry store entrance in broad daylight smash-and-grab. But the suspects got sloppy.

More than 500 comments have hit the sheriff’s office Facebook post about the incident; the following are a few gems:

“I mean, who doesn’t keep a crowbar in their buttocks?” one commenter quipped.”Guy had tools, looking into cars? Maybe he’s a mechanic??!!” another user offered.”I was at the Publix when he was walking around,” another commenter said. “It was very odd. He was walking in between cars, looking around, very sketchy. I have no clue how long he was there — but 2 employees were watching him. One of the employees walked me to my car — the guy was right by it until we walked over …””Dems will set up a GoFundMe for his release. LOL,” another user predicted.”Just another loser lowlife drain on society,” another commenter noted.

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​Crowbar, Florida, Shopping center, Parking lot, Arrest, Bodycam video, Crime 

The idea that Donald Trump is the Antichrist warned about in the Bible continues to circulate in some fringe Christian circles. Last month, William Upham — a former Marine and Florida Republican write-in congressional candidate — was arrested and charged for threatening the president after he posted videos calling Trump the Antichrist and saying he “must be killed.”

While Upham is the only one to take his Antichrist claim to criminal levels, he’s certainly not the only professing Christian to accuse Trump of being the Antichrist.

On a recent episode of “Strange Encounters,” Rick Burgess tested this theory by holding it up to Scripture.

“Let me go ahead and just tell you right now: Donald Trump does not meet the criteria, OK?” Rick says bluntly.

The first indicator that Trump doesn’t match the description of Revelation’s beast, he says, is that his communication skills do not hold up to the Antichrist standard.

“I don’t think [Trump] is all that great a communicator, and Antichrist will be the most polished politician the world has ever seen. He will be an incredible orator. You will be drawn to the way he speaks, the way he looks. … That right there, it’s already over,” says Rick.

But the list of reasons goes far deeper than just rhetorical gifts.

Rick explains that there are three primary theories for the Antichrist’s origin: Gentile/European from a revived Roman Empire, Jewish, or Middle Eastern.

“I don’t think that our friend and President Donald Trump is going to meet that very well,” he says.

Further, according 2 Thessalonians 2:4, the Antichrist “will oppose and will exalt himself over everything that is called God or is worshiped, so that he sets himself up in God’s temple, proclaiming himself to be God.”

In 1 John 2:22, an antichrist is anyone who “denies the Father and the Son.”

“I’m not the judge of Donald Trump, and under no circumstance am I given authority by God to judge anyone’s eternity, OK?” Rick caveats. “However … the way that I’ve seen Trump approach his faith … I don’t believe he is of the church, but I have seen that he’s proven he’s not an enemy of the church. Antichrist would be an enemy of the church.”

“Antichrist would be someone who tries to get in theology. See, Trump just doesn’t know good theology. He isn’t trying to change anyone’s mind on what Jesus claimed. He’s just not doing what Antichrist would be doing,” he adds.

To hear more, watch the episode above.

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​Rick burgess, Donald trump, Antichrist, Christianity, Spiritual warfare, Blazetv show