Rick Wiles is an American far-right political commentator, non-denominational senior pastor at Flowing Streams Church in Vero Beach, Florida, and a conspiracy theoristradio host and pundit. He is the founder of TruNews, a website that promotes racist, homophobic, Islamophobic and antisemitic conspiracy theories. Wiles has said that Jews seek to obtain control of countries to kill millions of Christians, and has described Jews as "deceivers" who "plot, they lie, they do whatever they have to do to accomplish their political agenda."
Career
Before becoming a radio host, Wiles worked as an advertising and marketing sales manager for CNN and ESPN in the early 1980's, and in 1984 joined the Christian Broadcasting Network as their first National Cable Marketing Manager. In 1995, he was hired as the Marketing Director for Trinity Broadcasting Network. He resigned from the network in September 1998. Wiles previously broadcast his radio show on WRMI, but has since adopted the internet as its sole platform, abandoning the short-wave broadcasting station.
TruNews
Wiles founded the organization later to be called TruNews in September 1998, based in Dallas/Fort Worth, Texas, as a Christian ministry. During later months, Wiles toured America where he spoke of moral decline and aimed to prevent "economic collapse" and "war on American soil". On May 24, 1999, the organisation, then named America's Hope, made its first broadcast. After five years of regular broadcasts, the news station changed its name to America Freedom News for a brief period. Wiles later changed it a second time to its current name, TruNews. It has also been known as Christian News Channel. Wiles was reported by The Colorado Independent in October 2014 to have said the spread of Ebola "could solve America's problems with atheism, homosexuality, sexual promiscuity, pornography and abortion". In late January 2020, he said the coronavirus was God's "death angel" and "plagues are one of the last steps of judgment." TruNews is known for promoting racist and antisemiticconspiracy theories. TruNews frequently described President Barack Obama as a "demon from hell". Obama, he claimed while the former president was in office, was the "jihadist-in-chief" who was "waging jihad against the United States from inside the White House" and murdered Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia as a "pagan sacrifice". During 2017, Wiles' guests included someone who claimed President Bill Clinton is a flesh eating cannibal leading to his contraction of related diseases. Another asserted that Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom is a "lizard person" who had Diana, Princess of Wales murdered because the Princess was in the process of revealing that the Royal Family was involved in satanism. He has also asserted that Israel and the "Jewish mafia" had President John F. Kennedy assassinated. Another edition of Wiles program claimed Israel and the "synagogue of Satan" are pushing the United States to fight wars on their behalf. Wiles has asserted that the effects of Hurricane Harvey upon the city of Houston, Texas, in September 2017 resulted from Houston's "LGBT devotion"; has described Judaism and Islam as "the Antichrist"; has called Central American immigrants a "brown invasion" being used by God to punish White Americans for legal abortion; has claimed that the 2017 Las Vegas shooting was conducted by government death squads from a "gay/lesbian Nazi regime"; and, in July 2018, predicted an imminent coup that would result in the nationally televised decapitation of the Trump family on the White House lawn. Wiles promoted antisemitic conspiracy theories of Jewish world domination while discussing the 2019 AIPAC conference. He said on TruNews in November 2019 that the congressional hearing concerning the impeachment of Donald Trump are "infested with Jews" and constitute a "Jew coup". He claimed: "That's the way the Jews work. They are deceivers. They plot, they lie, they do whatever they have to do to accomplish their political agenda" and asserted the United States would reach a state of civil war before Christmas. Millions of Christians would be murdered by Jews as a result. Of the hoax Protocols of the Elders of Zion, Wiles said the authors had "accurately predicted what was going to happen in the world." TruNews and Wiles have also claimed that the transgender rights movement is a Zionist plot to make all of humanity androgynous, that this supposed plot was inspired by Talmudic and Kabbalistic doctrines, and that it involves "putting specific things in food, in drink". Via Twitter in November 2019, TruNews said its channel had been suspended by YouTube. It was removed for violating YouTube's rules on hate speech. Wiles has denied his rhetoric has antisemitic intent: “It’s hard to say. I don’t know. I can tell you from my heart there is no ill will toward the Jewish people, with all sincerity.” He blamed George Soros for organizing a campaign against him. In late February 2020, TruNews was permanently banned from YouTube.
Inciting of violence and mass murder
The Trump administration has given Wiles's website press credentials on several occasions. In late July 2020, Wiles urged President Trump to use “billions of hollow-point bullets” against Black Lives Matter protestors in Portland, Oregon to put down the "insurrection". He claimed the bullets were hoarded by President Obama "to round up Christians and constitutionalists under a President Hillary Clinton".
