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Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif., slammed Republicans on Monday for “weaponizing faith,” while praising a Texas state representative who recently said that Christians can support abortion.
MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace asked Swalwell about a podcast episode published Friday that Joe Rogan did with Democratic Texas State Rep. James Talarico, where he relayed his mother told him she was a Democrat because they “fight for the people.”
In the Rogan interview, Talarico admitted Democrats have strayed from that stance, saying, “I don’t know how much our party is still true to that, but I do know that that’s our historical legacy, is the party that fights for — for — for the little guy. And I think we’re at our best when we do that today. We’re at our worst when we stray from that.”
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Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif., slammed Republicans for “weaponizing faith,” and praised a Texas state representative who recently said that Christians can support abortion. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc. via Getty Images)
Wallace asked Swalwell what he thought of the exchange between Rogan and Talarico, which Swallwell said was “very moving.”
Swalwell went on to slam Republicans.
“I saw myself as a Democrat because Republicans fight for the rich and Democrats fight for the rest,” Swalwell said. “But the larger point here, and you asked right before we went to a commercial, how do we reach more voters on this message of why they should have the Epstein files, what the assemblymember is doing is, he’s going into more spaces and places.”
The California Democrat took a shot at the GOP for “weaponizing faith.”
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Talarico slammed the “religious right” and said that he thinks it doesn’t matter if Christians are pro-abortion. (Photo by Jason Bollenbacher/SXSW Conference & Festivals via Getty Images)
“I made a decision after the last election, when I saw that 68% of the voters identified as Christian in one way or another, that I needed to do Christian podcasts,” Swalwell said. “And I’ve been doing about one to two a month. I was raised as a Christian. I went to a Christian college on a soccer scholarship, but I would not talk about my faith because I thought it didn’t really belong in politics. But what I’ve seen is that Republicans are weaponizing faith, and it’s actually to our own disadvantage to not talk about it.”
In the same interview between Rogan and Talarico that Swalwell praised, Talarico slammed the “religious right” and said he thinks it doesn’t matter if Christians are pro-abortion.
“I get suspicious when anybody, whether it’s a televangelist or a politician, tells me that something is central to my faith when Jesus never talks about it,” Talarico said.
“To me, that should, I think, ring alarm bells as to what is the agenda here, what is someone trying to get across,” he added. “And I think if we’re looking at the last 40, 50 years, the religious right has made a concerted effort to make homosexuality and abortion the two biggest issues for Christians. And you know, the Southern Baptist Convention was pro-choice until the late 1970s. So this idea that to be a Christian means you have to be anti-gay and anti-abortion, there really is no historical, theological, biblical basis for that opinion.”
Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif., told MSNBC, “What I’ve seen is that Republicans are weaponizing faith, and it’s actually to our own disadvantage to not talk about it.” (Fox News Digital/Elizabeth Elkind)
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