Televangelist pastor Mark Burns, who acted as a surrogate for Donald Trump during the 2016 presidential election, on Thursday announced that he will run for the seat Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC) will vacate when he retires this year.
Burns rose to prominence during Trump’s 2016 campaign as one of his most vocal African American supporters, and has a history of minor controversies. In fall 2016, he issued public apologies twice in one week — once for posting a cartoon that depicted Hillary Clinton in blackface and again for exaggerating his resume on his church’s website after CNN pointed out the discrepancies during an interview.
Burns announced his candidacy in a video where he highlighted his closeness to Trump as a member of the President’s faith advisory council and described himself as “an emerging force in the conservative movement.”
The video also highlighted Burns’ inflammatory speech at the 2016 Republican National Convention. A voice-over in the video claims that Burns “defied the elitist liberal establishment when he declared that ‘all lives matter.’”
Burns is one of at least five other Republican candidates vying for Gowdy’s seat, which opened up when Gowdy announced that he plans to leave Washington, D.C. after eight years and will return to South Carolina to resume his law practice. The Republican primaries for South Carolina’s 4th congressional district will take place in June.
Watch Burns’ campaign announcement below:
H/t NBC
Burns claimed to have held a bachelor of science degree from North Greenville University;[22] said he was a member of the historically African-American fraternity, Kappa Alpha Psi;[23] and claimed to have served six years in the U.S. Army Reserve.[22] But in August 2016, those longstanding claims in his biography were disproved after CNN fact-checked them.[22]
. . . .
Later he admitted that he had lied and had unacceptably exaggerated his education, but said he was attacked because he is “a black man supporting Donald Trump for president.”[3]
He also reported that his marriage to Morgan Fairchild remains strong.
Ho-ly Shit! Democrats could actually win this seat. This guy is a freak. He consistently gets slapped around and humiliated by Joy Reid, has his mic shut off on other programs, and is recognizably, demonstrably crazy. But he’s the type of sellout who could win the GOP nod because he’s “one of the good ones”. He could get that “We voted for this one self-hating nigg-ughh-black, so we’re not racist” vote. Even though this is a R+15 district, this fool is a special kind of crazy that could put it in the D column.
I wonder if Vegas is taking bets on when he’s forced to drop out. I’ll take March 17.
Hey Shouty Preacher: Great video! Loved it! Just have a couple of suggestions. That stripey-slanty transition, I would pare the use of that one down to never. The maladjusted-TV effect doesn’t lend a note of verisimilitude, as in “This was on TV once,” it lends a note of pointless stupid. The music would be better if your campaign were about hobbits and wizards and so forth, but I didn’t hear many references to that. This may not be the year to chain yourself to Donald Trump and throw the key down the sewer. And you’re way too shouty. Other than that I loved it. [Ed. note: I did not love it.]
Off topic, but
It's Mueller time