When a defense secretary's pastor says he wants a politician 'crucified'

The Pattern

In March 2026, Brooks Potteiger, the pastor of US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, appeared on the podcast “Reformation Red Pill” and said of Texas state Representative James Talarico, a Democrat: “We want him crucified.” The podcast’s host, Joshua Haymes, also a member of Potteiger’s church, added: “I pray that God kills him. Ultimately, that means killing his heart and raising him up to new life in Christ.”

Snopes investigated and found that the broader context suggested Potteiger and Haymes were speaking figuratively about spiritual transformation, not literally calling for physical violence. Snopes rated the literal-violence reading as false; Potteiger and Haymes say they were speaking about spiritual transformation. But the language matters, and the context in which it was delivered matters more.

The rhetoric of religious violence

The word “crucified” in a Christian context carries a specific weight. It is the central image of the faith, a man executed by the state in a public spectacle. When a pastor says he wants a politician “crucified,” he is invoking that image and attaching it to a living person. The subsequent clarification, that “crucified” means spiritually transformed, is the kind of walkback that the rhetoric was designed to make necessary. The statement gets the reaction. The clarification manages it. But the statement is what travels.

This is a pattern in Christian nationalist rhetoric: use the language of violence and spiritual warfare, then retreat to the figurative interpretation when challenged. The audience that hears “crucified” and feels energized is not the same audience that hears “spiritually transformed” and feels reassured. The first audience gets the message. The second audience gets the defense. The message and the defense are not aimed at the same people.

The proximity to power

What elevates this beyond a pastor’s podcast appearance is proximity. Potteiger is not a random pastor. He is the pastor of the US Secretary of Defense. When a defense secretary’s spiritual leader uses the language of crucifixion about a sitting politician, the distance between the pulpit and the state is close enough that the rhetoric cannot be dismissed as private religious expression. The secretary of defense controls the military. His pastor is talking about killing a congressman. The figurative interpretation may be sincere, but the structural relationship makes the rhetoric consequential regardless of intent.

Why this is propaganda

This is not misinformation in the fact-checking sense. The quote is real, the context is available, and the figurative reading is plausible. It is propaganda in the rhetorical sense: language designed to mobilize a community against a political opponent using the authority of religious belief. The move is to frame political opposition as spiritual warfare, which makes compromise impossible and confrontation sacred. If your opponent is not wrong but evil, you cannot negotiate with them. You can only defeat them.

The defense is not to litigate whether “crucified” was literal or figurative. It is to notice the pattern: religious authority being used to frame political opponents as targets of divine violence, and the proximity of that authority to state power. The language does not need to result in action to be effective. It needs to change what the audience believes is permissible to say, and eventually, to do.