JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
A self-described prophet has been touring swing states and recruiting believers to serve as volunteer poll workers and watchers. He helped mobilize Christians to gather in Washington, D.C., on January 6, 2021. One sign this community is important to the Trump campaign - vice presidential candidate JD Vance stopped by. NPR's Lisa Hagen reports from Pennsylvania.
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LANCE WALLNAU: Come on. Let's waken our praise today. (Singing) Well, come on, my soul.
LISA HAGEN, BYLINE: The Courage Tour's latest stop was in Monroeville, just outside Pittsburgh.
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WALLNAU: This isn't a political rally, certainly. It's much different than a revival meeting.
HAGEN: That's the tour's lead organizer, an evangelical media figure named Lance Wallnau. Here he is with his wife speaking in tongues over one of the tour's guitarists.
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WALLNAU: (Vocalizing). You have the ability to praise the Lord.
HAGEN: The Wallnaus are just two of several charismatic Christian leaders hosting these revival-style events, where Trump is prophesied as God's anointed candidate, according to Matthew Taylor. He's a senior scholar at the Institute for Islamic, Christian and Jewish Studies.
MATTHEW TAYLOR: They understand this as a literal spiritual battle between angels and demons that the angels are trying to enact the will of God, which they believe is to see Donald Trump given a second term.
HAGEN: On January 6, 2021, Wallnau was scheduled to speak at a prayer rally in Washington, D.C. But by then, Trump supporters had already broken into the U.S. Capitol. So Wallnau went back to his hotel room and streamed live on a Christian talk show.
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WALLNAU: Why are they smearing Donald Trump's campaign? Because they want to smear Donald Trump. They want to smear his peaceful people, and they want to make it look like we are the agitators.
HAGEN: Taylor has done extensive research on Christians involved in the insurrection.
TAYLOR: And you can find them posting Lance Wallnau videos and Lance Wallnau commentary.
HAGEN: Since before 2016, Wallnau has built a large following by generating popular Biblical rationales for supporting Trump. And to this day, Wallnau refers to the January 6 Capitol riots as, quote, "election fraud intervention." At the Courage Tour, speakers like Joshua Standifer are laying out an updated approach to the coming election. His nonprofit, Lion of Judah, is helping recruit the folks in the audience to work their local elections.
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JOSHUA STANDIFER: We all remember 2020. When they board up the windows, when they close the doors, when they kick all the volunteers out, you can be on the inside and be one of the ones making a difference and making sure that nothing nefarious happens.
HAGEN: Standifer also wants these poll workers to send in anything they see that looks like evidence of fraud. He's been calling the effort a Trojan horse, which he told NPR doesn't mean he's looking to disrupt polling places. Standifer said it got great media attention, though. No election runs perfectly, according to Mollie Cohen. She teaches political science at Purdue University.
MOLLIE COHEN: But if you are constantly under scrutiny by folks who are looking to catch you in a mistake, certainly there are mistakes to be found.
HAGEN: She says most mistakes are caught and addressed very quickly, and Cohen also says research shows that working the polls increases confidence in elections.
COHEN: Something happens when people engage in election administration. It is very boring. It's quite tedious.
HAGEN: Seeing the process in person has been helpful for Dina Macey. She was a poll watcher in 2020 and one of the first in line to see JD Vance at the Courage Tour.
Can you describe your car?
DINA MACEY: Yeah. It's the white Subaru that's all Trumped out. It's got the Trump flags all over it and the bumper stickers, you know, magnets.
HAGEN: Macey didn't love everything about the election she's worked. But ultimately, the process she saw felt secure. That trust, though, does not extend beyond her county.
MACEY: I don't have a lot of faith in our government right now, so I'm just going to leave it at that.
HAGEN: Traveling shows like Wallnau's do a lot to reinforce that suspicion.
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WALLNAU: We don't trust the government on vaccines now. We don't trust them on laptops. We don't trust them on elections, and that's not a good place for a country.
HAGEN: This election, the Trump campaign has focused heavily on legal challenges to voting rules. They've also geared up to dispute election results in the courts. And that's all a big part of why Matthew Taylor is concerned.
TAYLOR: The Courage Tour is one component of this multipronged effort to stage the aftermath of this election as a season of contestation.
HAGEN: A contentious election is also useful material for the kind of right-wing, religious media circles Wallnau is a part of. Taylor believes those messengers posed a serious threat to democracy in 2020. And he says it's not looking much different this time around.
Lisa Hagen, NPR News, Monroeville, Pa. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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