MS NOW co-host Symone Sanders accused the Trump administration of advancing “Christian nationalist priorities” during Tuesday’s edition of “The Weeknight,” arguing that the agenda can be seen across multiple parts of the federal government.
Sanders made the remarks while discussing Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought and plans developed by conservatives during the Biden administration for a second Donald Trump presidency.
She began by reading an excerpt from a book describing Vought’s role in preparing for Trump’s return to office.
“After serving in Trump’s first administration, Vought spent the Biden years hatching plans for the unrestrained vengeance tour that would become Trump’s second presidency,” Sanders read. “Much of his post-constitutional philosophy was laid out in Project 2025, the authoritarian policy roadmap. He helped write for the Heritage Foundation to correct the problem of America being too secular. Vought vowed Christian nationalist priorities would be plugged right in to a second term.”
Sanders then argued that those priorities are no longer merely proposals contained in conservative policy documents.
“We see it,” she said. “We can see it at the Defense Department in the policies that the defense secretary has laid out. You see it in the administration, you see it in the things that the president himself is saying. You can see it in the Education Department.”
Sanders added that she was using “air quotes” when referring to the Education Department because, in her characterization, the administration had “gutted it.”
“This is happening right now,” she said.
The discussion then turned to House Speaker Mike Johnson, whom Sanders directly labeled a “Christian nationalist.”
Sanders questioned whether the broader news media had adequately described Johnson’s politics and religious worldview, suggesting that coverage had softened how he was presented to the public.
“And do you think it is a failure on the larger media apparatus that we don’t talk more about that?” Sanders asked. “I mean, I kind of feel like we’ve all participated in some way, shape and form in sanitizing who he is.”
She then repeated her characterization of the speaker.
“He was, he is, a Christian nationalist,” Sanders said.
Sanders also pointed to Johnson’s role in challenging the results of the 2020 presidential election, calling him a “chief cheerleader of the efforts to overturn the election.”
“He’s an extremist, in my opinion,” she concluded.
