The violent anti-Obama sentiment coming out of central Arizona managed to get still more toxic over the weekend.
Chris Broughton, the man who brought an AR-15 rifle and a handgun to an Arizona Obama rally earlier this month, says he “concurs” with his fundamentalist pastor’s prayer for President Obama “to die and go to hell.”
And in an interview with a local TV station, pastor Steven Anderson himself elaborated on his statement to TPMmuckraker that he would prefer Obama to die of natural causes so “he’s not some martyr.”
“I don’t want him to be a martyr, we don’t need another holiday. I’d like to see him die, like Ted Kennedy, of brain cancer,” Anderson now says.
In an interview with ABC 15 outside the storefront Faithful Word Baptist Church in Tempe, Broughton said of Anderson’s controversial August 16 “Why I Hate Barack Obama” sermon: “I concur, I think we’d be better off if God would send [Obama] where he’s going now instead of later. [Obama] is destroying our country.”
And when a reporter followed up with, “you’re not advocating violence against the president?” Broughton, who has previously said his weapons are for defense, says “I’m not going to answer that question directly.”
“I don’t care how God does it, I’m not going into further detail than that,” Broughton says. “It would be better now than later.”
In fact, Broughton added, he moved to the Tempe area to attend Anderson’s storefront church, which is an “old-fashioned, independent, fundamental, King James Bible only, separated Baptist church.”
Roughly 24 hours after attending Anderson’s anti-Obama sermon, Broughton made national headlines when he showed up heavily armed to an Obama event in Phoenix.
Here’s the ABC 15 report:
The Secret Service has not returned calls for comment about whether it has contacted Broughton and a report that it interviewed Anderson (which he now denies).
In other Faithful Word Baptist news, a man disgusted with Anderson’s prayer for Obama to die showed up to protest services Sunday. And Anderson says parishioners showed up with guns, so “people know if they come down here swinging a baseball bat, we’re ready to protect ourselves.”
Late Update: The Secret Service responds.