Ex-Trump Advisor Says Club Q Shooting Victims Will Suffer “Eternal Damnation”
Right-wing pundit Jenna Ellis muses whether the Club Q victims had sufficiently embraced Jesus as their savior.
A former legal advisor to Donald Trump sparked outrage on social media after she mused during a recent episode of her podcast that the victims in the mass shooting in Colorado would likely suffer “eternal damnation” because they hadn’t been “saved.”
Jenna Ellis, who has become a right-wing pundit following her stint with the Trump administration, said during an episode of her podcast, The Jenna Ellis Show, that the five victims who died in the Nov. 19 shooting might be damned for all eternity because there was no evidence that any of them had embraced Jesus as their savior.
“Even more tragic than untimely death, is that the five people who were killed in the nightclub that night, there is no evidence at all that they were Christians,” Ellis said. “And so assuming that they had not accepted the truth of the Gospel of Christ and affirmed Jesus Christ as the lord of their life, they are now reaping the consequences of having eternal damnation.”
The victims — Raymond Vance Green, Kelly Loving, Daniel Aston, Derrick Rump, and Ashley Paugh — two of whom were transgender and another two of whom were involved in opposite-sex relationships, according to the Colorado Sun — were killed while attending Club Q, an LGBTQ nightclub in Colorado Springs. According to witnesses, a man entered the club with a long rifle and a handgun and began shooting indiscriminately into the crowd.
Eighteen other individuals were injured in the attack.
Ellis, who prides herself on her identity as conservative Christian, is no stranger to making disparaging comments about the LGBTQ community, whose members she views as sinners. According to The Huffington Post, she criticized Colorado Springs police for including the victims’ preferred pronouns in a news release about the shooting.
The left-wing watchdog site Media Matters for America has documented several of Ellis’s anti-LGBTQ statements over the years. Ellis has been outspoken about the fact that homosexuality is not compatible with many conservative Christians’ worldview, writing in a Facebook post that “Christians cannot follow God and accept or condone or participate in homosexuality or adulterous behavior.” In another post, she expressed similar sentiments, writing: “Whether or not homosexuals are nice, wise people, or misunderstood, or mean is not the issue. … Sin is always sin, even if nice people commit it.”
Following the 2016 Pulse nightclub massacre in Orlando, Florida, in which 49 people were killed and 53 wounded, Ellis wrote a column expressing disappointment that some conservatives were, in her words, “acquiescing to the LGBT agenda” by being more conciliatory regarding their rhetoric and LGBTQ rights in general.
“Let me be clear—the Orlando shooting was absolutely terrible and tragic,” she wrote. “But the response to this tragedy should not be embracing and advocating for gay rights.
“The deaths were an absolute tragedy, but LGBT activism is NOT the appropriate response,” she continued. “To begin activism only after a mass shooting concedes there was no reason to object in the first place. That is simply not true. We have every constitutional and moral reason to object to gay activism.”
Ellis also attacked former presidential candidate and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg’s embrace of his faith on the campaign trail, deeming him insufficiently Christian.
“If Pete Buttigieg is going to invoke the name of his Creator, he should read for himself what his Creator says about homosexuality in the Bible,” Ellis wrote in a Facebook post. “Truth doesn’t change, regardless of the culture or the Dems’ identity politics.”
She has also sought to cast gay men as vectors for disease, linking to a piece talking about higher HIV rates among gay and bisexual men and implying the virus is punishment for sinning.’
“We cannot escape God’s moral law and His supremacy,” she commented.
Ellis criticized the Food and Drug Administration when it changed its lifetime ban on gay men donating blood to a 12-month deferral period, calling the move a “political” one that was “unsupported by science.”
“The 12-month deferral irrationally presumes that 1. gay men will voluntarily have had AIDS tests in the preceding year and 2. be truthful about their sexual activity,” she wrote.
Ellis’s most recent comments, unsurprisingly, have earned backlash from people on social media who accused her of being hateful and intolerant towards LGBTQ people, with one commenter even calling her a “monster.” But Ellis has pushed back, saying that her criticisms of the victims — as well as other individuals failing to live by Biblical principles — have nothing to do with identity.
“I am concerned for ANYONE and EVERYONE who is not saved,” Ellis tweeted in response to her critics. “The point isn’t that these people were gay/trans, but that there is no evidence they were saved. Y’all need church.”
It’s such a stupidly false leftist talking point to say “you hate gay and trans people.”
No, I don’t. I am concerned for ANYONE and EVERYONE who is not saved. The point isn’t that these people were gay/trans, but that there is no evidence they were saved. Y’all need church.
— Jenna Ellis 🍊🦅 (@JennaEllisEsq) November 23, 2022
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