The TAC Interview: Carrie Prejean Boller on MAGA’s Israel Divide
The TAC Interview: Carrie Prejean Boller on MAGA’s Israel Divide
The author and former Miss California USA sat down with The American Conservative to discuss her removal from the Religious Liberty Commission.
Carrie Prejean Boller, who was recently removed from a federal religious freedom advisory commission, says her ouster followed months of conflict over her public criticism of Israel and objections to defining anti-Zionism as antisemitism. In an interview with The American Conservative, she discussed the dispute, her role in a contentious commission hearing, and divisions on the right over Israel.
You were involved in a viral exchange on the Religious Liberty Commission. It ultimately led to your removal from that group. Among other issues that you raised, you challenged a panel of Israel loyalists on their insistence that criticism of Israel is a form of antisemitism. And then, as I said, a couple of days later, you were kicked off of that panel for your opinions. Can you talk a little bit about what happened there? From my understanding this was a conflict that had been brewing for some time, well before that meeting.
I would call it a witch hunt. They’ve been trying to get rid of me since the very beginning, ever since I started using my personal social media platforms to talk about what was going on in Gaza. As a pro-life Christian, I couldn’t deny the horrific suffering that the Palestinians were enduring. So I started posting, and I knew that would potentially come at a cost. And so, back in August, I got a call from the White House from a woman named Mary Sproul, and she asked me to resign from this commission.
I knew right away why she was asking me to do it. But I asked her, “Under what grounds are you asking me to resign? Because I’m not resigning. Unless I hear from the president, I’m not resigning.” And she said, “Well, I’ve been instructed to call you by Paula White, Dan Patrick, and a woman named Brittany Baldwin, who used to work for Ted Cruz.” So these are all very pro-Zionist people who were pressuring, obviously, someone within the White House to call me asking me for my resignation.
I wasn’t sure if the president was even aware of this, and so when I saw him at the following hearing, he reassured me that I was going to remain on this commission, and that he knows the real me, and he kind of saved me. So I stayed on the commission and I kept posting about my religious beliefs.
And then Dan Patrick and Paula White called me one day and said that I wasn’t allowed to post at all. And then the hearing happened on a Monday, where I was just fed up, and I just said, “This is crazy. I can’t even voice my own opinions on my religious beliefs here on this Religious Liberty Commission.”
I started asking questions. What is an antisemite? Under IHRA [the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance], there are certain things that are concerning to me as a Christian about their definition of antisemitism, and I have a problem with that. So, we should be able to have these discussions. People shouldn’t be silenced, canceled, or kicked off religious commissions for their religious beliefs.
You invited a number of Jewish Americans, like Norman Finkelstein, among other guests, to speak at this commission. How and when did you discover him? And why did you feel that it was so important and necessary to bring Jewish Americans like him to the commission?
Yeah, I knew that if we were going to have a topic on antisemitism, then I would want to hear from Jewish Americans who are facing real antisemitism here in America. And many of these people that I recommended, these Jewish Americans, Rabbi Shapiro out of New York, Mikko Pallad—he’s based in DC—and then Norm Finkelstein, they’re all Jewish Americans, but they’re not the “right” Jews for this commission, because they aren’t Zionist Jews. And so they were all rejected. I even invited two Palestinian Christian groups to come and speak, giving their side of the story on this entire antisemitism hearing. It was very obvious that the only people that were hijacking this hearing were these Christian Zionists, like Paula White and Dan Patrick, who were refusing to hear from a rabbi. Who better than a Jewish rabbi in New York who has been fighting against Zionism for over 40 years to come and speak at this antisemitism hearing? They didn’t want to hear from him.
Why? Because you have to be a certain type of Jew in order to be invited to this. You can’t be an anti-Zionist and be a Jewish American and have your voice be heard. That’s antisemitism in itself.
There is obviously this extremely well-financed Israeli campaign to propagandize Americans to love that foreign government, particularly to propagandize American Christians and to pressure them to love Israel, and this has been the case for a while within the American Christian community. What has been your experience with and observations about that?
I think that Christianity has been hijacked. Let’s be honest, this goes back to a theological debate. Really that’s what it comes down to. They believe that they have a right to go in and kill all these innocent Palestinians because supposedly the Bible says that they can do that. [South Carolina Senator] Lindsey Graham says that if you don’t bless Israel, then God’s going to curse you. I mean, this is crazy. [Texas Senator] Ted Cruz is saying those who bless Israel will be blessed. He’s literally making the claim that those who support Bibi Netanyahu’s secular state of Israel will be blessed, and if you don’t support it, what? What’s going to happen? You’re going to die, the Lord’s going to pull the plug on Americans? This is crazy, this is heretical teaching, and I, as a Catholic, reject that. That is not what we’ve been taught for 2,000 years.
This does go back to a theological discussion, and it’s one that needs to be talked about, because I think Christianity has been subverted, and it’s been hijacked by these Christian Zionists like Ted Cruz, Dan Patrick and Paula White, who say that if you don’t support the state of Israel, a foreign nation that is committing genocide, that God won’t bless you.
I reject that. That’s heretical, and that’s blasphemous, actually, because I serve a God that doesn’t want innocent people killed. So for them to say that they can just go in and commit genocide in the name of God, I reject that and every Christian should reject that.
Now, I want to ask you about a criticism that I’ve seen online in recent days, particularly from, I would say, the pro-Palestinian crowd, people who have been interested in these issues for a long time, going back maybe even a decade, when Israel was bombing the Gaza Strip in 2014, in 2012, and 2008. There are some people who’ve suggested that your advocacy now is opportunistic. How long have you felt this way about the parasitic influence of the Israel lobby on American politics, and why did you decide to speak out now and not sooner?
I was speaking out years ago. I was from the very beginning. I’ve never shied away from the way I feel. You know, I was serving on this Religious Liberty Commission, and I was speaking out publicly, even with the risk of being threatened, even with the risk of being fired from this commission, being asked to resign. I continued to stand. I wasn’t going to allow them to bully me and silence me because I don’t agree with their biblical theology. That’s crazy. This is a religious freedom commission, and I don’t have my own religious freedom to reject theirs.
I don’t have a podcast, I don’t make any money from anything that I do, I don’t have a platform other than my little social media, so how is this opportunistic? How is this opportunistic that I’m now facing death threats and attacks? No, it shows you how my religious beliefs mean more to me than access to the White House or any fancy invites. No, my faith in Christ is so important to me that I would rather die than deny my faith in Christ. That’s how important it is to me. So I take offense to anybody that says that this is opportunistic.
Candace Owens last week suggested that MAGA, the movement that Trump started in 2016, is dead, that it’s been replaced by something else that’s called MIGA, or Make Israel Great Again. You’ve known President Trump for a long time. Is it your view that he has abandoned MAGA in favor of this new cause called MIGA?
I mean, it’s a question that a lot of people are asking, and I’m experiencing it in real time, that I can’t criticize a foreign country, I can’t embrace my own religious freedom in America and stay on a commission because I’m questioning Israel.
What is going on here? Why is Israel being mentioned at an antisemitism hearing? Why are we equating anti-Zionism with antisemitism?
I really hope that Trump hasn’t abandoned MAGA. I really do, because he ran on Make America Great Again. And let me tell you, you don’t make America great again by kicking a Catholic mom off a religious liberty commission because she’s Catholic. That’s not how you make America great again, and that’s definitely not going to help [Vice President] J.D. Vance. If he stays silent on this topic.
MAGA is divided; they’re divided over Israel and the tremendous amount of influence that they have over our American politicians. We’re seeing it now. It’s no longer a conspiracy. We’re witnessing it in real time, with the Epstein files, with what’s going on with me, and people are done. And I really hope the president stands firm with what he originally ran on, which is to make America great again. Not make Israel great again.
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