He believes, without evidence, that there was significant fraud in the 2020 election. In fact, Metaxas has become only more vocal-and seemingly fearful-in recent weeks. President Joe Biden’s inauguration has not made Metaxas and the Trump supporters who agree with him go away. Metaxas’s tweet suggested that he thought the Biden administration was using the Capitol attack to do the same. In 1933, Hitler’s government used a fire at the Reichstag, which housed the German Parliament, as a pretext to consolidate power and suppress dissent. “If this isn’t our ‘Reichstag Fire’ I don’t know what is,” he tweeted on January 27, commenting on the Department of Homeland Security’s warnings about the potential for domestic terrorism following the Capitol attack.

Metaxas has spent his career writing books about these figures and has a tendency to describe current events in dramatic historical terms. Metaxas sees himself and other evangelical Trump supporters as part of a long line of Christians who stood up against grave wrongdoings in history: William Wilberforce, the slavery abolitionist and evangelical Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the Lutheran theologian who was arrested and later hanged for his dissent against the Nazi regime. God is with us,” Metaxas told the president.

During a November episode of Metaxas’s radio show, Pennsylvania State Senator Doug Mastriano put Trump on speakerphone. “I take that as a high compliment.” He has leaned into his reputation as a staunch Trump defender. “That’s hilarious!” he said when I described the email. Metaxas told me he didn’t know that this is how he’s being pitched to journalists, but he doesn’t hate it. Oh, and by the way, he has a new book out. He even appeared in a New York Times article about Christian extremism.

Metaxas has tweeted “ martial rhetoric” in defense of former President Donald Trump, his publicist wrote cheerfully. The PR pitch was brazen: Eric Metaxas, it declared, is “America’s #1 Bad Christian.” The Christian writer and radio host has been promoting doubts about the legitimacy of the 2020 election, including at a prayer rally he emceed on the National Mall in December.

Dietrich bonhoeffer eric metaxas