{"id":41937,"date":"2026-06-18T06:29:17","date_gmt":"2026-06-18T06:29:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/41937\/"},"modified":"2026-06-18T06:29:17","modified_gmt":"2026-06-18T06:29:17","slug":"trump-rescinds-endorsement-of-right-wing-pastor-after-texting-scandal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/41937\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump Rescinds Endorsement of Right-Wing Pastor After Texting Scandal"},"content":{"rendered":"

President Trump rescinded his endorsement of a right-wing pastor for a House seat in Oklahoma on Wednesday after a texting scandal shook up the Republican primary, throwing his weight behind the pastor\u2019s opponent the day after both candidates advanced to a runoff<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Minutes later, the pastor, Jackson Lahmeyer, withdrew from the race.<\/p>\n

\u201cI do not want to be a distraction to my family, my church, and the great people of Oklahoma\u2019s 1st Congressional District, who deserve a strong conservative voice representing them in Washington,\u201d Mr. Lahmeyer wrote on social media<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The switch-up makes State Representative Mark Tedford the presumptive Republican nominee, putting him in a strong position to win the general election. Anchored in Tulsa, the district is considered solidly red<\/a>, with voters there electing Mr. Trump by 21 percentage points in 2024.<\/p>\n

Mr. Lahmeyer leads a Tulsa church with his wife. But the image he cultivated as a religious leader took a hit on Sunday when The Daily Mail published intimate texts between him and a woman who is not his wife<\/a>, in which he called her \u201ccute\u201d and floated an invitation to his hotel room. In a Facebook post<\/a> on Sunday night, he acknowledged sending the messages but contended that his communications had been \u201ccarefully cherry-picked to create an impression that is not accurate.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI own crossing a boundary line through text messaging,\u201d Mr. Lahmeyer wrote. \u201cI also ended all communication.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr. Trump threw his weight behind Mr. Lahmeyer<\/a> in early May, calling him a \u201cMAGA Warrior\u201d who had \u201cbeen with me from the very beginning of our Movement.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a Truth Social post on Wednesday afternoon, the president wrote that he was reversing course but did not detail his reasoning.<\/p>\n

\u201cI greatly appreciate Jackson Lahmeyer\u2019s hard work under difficult circumstances \u2014 He has always been with me, and I will always be with him,\u201d Mr. Trump wrote<\/a>. \u201cBut, when it comes to the current Congressional race for Oklahoma\u2019s 1st Congressional District, I will be supporting America First Patriot, Mark Tedford. Mark is Pro Trump and MAGA all the way!\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr. Tedford is seeking to succeed Representative Kevin Hern, a Republican who is running for the Senate seat vacated by Markwayne Mullin, who is now the homeland security secretary.<\/p>\n

The candidate was in the middle of getting a haircut when he learned that he had won Mr. Trump\u2019s endorsement.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was kind of surreal,\u201d Mr. Tedford said in an interview. \u201cEverything\u2019s moving very fast.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr. Lahmeyer helped mobilize<\/a> evangelical support for Mr. Trump before the 2024 election, after earlier amplifying his false claims<\/a> that the 2020 election was stolen. The pastor has deep ties to Mr. Trump\u2019s longtime ally Roger J. Stone Jr., who backed Mr. Lahmeyer in his unsuccessful run to unseat Senator James Lankford of Oklahoma in the 2022 Republican primary. Speaker Mike Johnson, Republican of Louisiana, also endorsed Mr. Lahmeyer.<\/p>\n

Mr. Lahmeyer repeatedly targeted<\/a> Muslim Oklahomans in his campaign, writing on social media that \u201cAmerica is a Christian nation\u201d<\/a> and that \u201cIslam MUST BE DEFEATED in the West.\u201d He has also posted<\/a> on social media that he believes the Antichrist \u201cwill be Jewish,\u201d a \u201chomosexual\u201d and \u201cnot a globalist.\u201d He has denied that this view is antisemitic<\/a>, saying Jesus was also Jewish and emphasizing that he is \u201cpro-Israel.\u201d He did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

Mr. Tedford, a businessman who lent more than $1 million<\/a> to his campaign and had the backing of Oklahoma\u2019s Republican State House speaker, finished first in the runoff on Tuesday<\/a>, according to The Associated Press.<\/p>\n

He will face John Croisant, a Tulsa school board member and businessman, in November. Mr. Croisant, who was uncontested for the Democratic nomination, has centered his campaign on health care affordability, education and stopping \u201ccorruption and chaos,\u201d he said in a recent interview with The New York Times.<\/p>\n

Mr. Tedford said he strongly supported Mr. Trump and his agenda.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m very proud to be endorsed by him,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd now we\u2019re moving on to win this election in November.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"President Trump rescinded his endorsement of a right-wing pastor for a House seat in Oklahoma on Wednesday after…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":41938,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[4],"tags":[6238,286,8,13085,7520,23856,15141,798,9,1958,23857,7,1071],"class_list":["post-41937","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-top-stories","tag-donald-j","tag-elections","tag-headlines","tag-house-of-representatives","tag-jackson","tag-lahmeyer","tag-mark","tag-midterm-elections-2026","tag-news","tag-oklahoma","tag-tedford","tag-top-stories","tag-trump"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@news\/116769702711881726","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41937","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41937"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41937\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/41938"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41937"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41937"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41937"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}