A Lutheran minister looking for a promotion to Congress once claimed that challenges to the traditional definitions of men and women are “very threatening” to white men and downplayed concerns about the dangers of transgender ideology for women. 

Sarah Trone Garriott, a Democrat candidate for Iowa’s 3rd Congressional District, claimed that Evangelical Christians oppose “GLBTQ” ideology not because of theology, but racial angst, according to an October 2023 speech uncovered by The Daily Wire. Trone Garriott, a former state senator and minister in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, hopes to unseat incumbent Republican Rep. Zach Nunn.

During her speech on “Christian Nationalism” at Ames First United Methodist Church, Trone Garriott argued that Evangelical Christians needed “threats” to react against to maintain their identity. 

“A new threat that we see today is the GLBTQ movement,” she said. “It’s a challenging of that status quo, of the way that things have been, of who’s a man and who’s woman and how relationships are. It’s very threatening to the idea of the white male, powerful figure, because it muddies the waters and makes things ambiguous and confusing.”

“We see all kinds of responses happening in legislation and in community conflicts … a lot more emphasis on, you know, really funding and supporting the separation, the private schools, the parents’ rights,” she said. “And within that, the parents’ rights piece is used to enact book bans, sports bans about who can play and who can compete,” she said. 

Trone Garriott then suggested that laws to keep males out of female sports or protect kids from sexually explicit books were motivated by a misguided belief that “white men” are “responsible” for protecting women. 

“It’s really couched in the language of there’s a threat against women and white men are responsible to protect women from threats. So a lot of the legislation is about we’re going to protect these feminine, fragile, weak women and girls from a threat to their bodies, their persons, their identity in this way.”

During her time in the State Senate, Trone Garriott voted against a bill to keep boys out of girls’ sports and opposed a bill shielding children from transgender procedures. 

Republican spokesman Zach Kraft told The Daily Wire that Trone Garriott’s positions were out of step with Iowans. 

“Sarah Trone Garriott is a preacher of the woke gospel,” he said. “It is sickening to see her twist Christianity as a justification to force sex changes on young children. That may have been popular with her friends at Harvard, but Iowa voters will reject this radical lunatic.” 

Trone Garriott spent much of her speech attacking “white Christian men” and “white evangelical leaders,” an aggressive strategy in a state where white evangelicals compose a major voting bloc. She even attacked famed evangelist Billy Graham for having an “attractive, strong, macho guy persona.” 

She also challenged traditional Evangelical Christian understandings of Jesus Christ and the Bible. Her denomination, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, is much more liberal than its counterpart, the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod. 

“There’s a lot of different ways to think about what Christ did on the cross,” she said during the speech. “There’s not just one way. It makes us wonder, well, who is this Christ?”

Trone Garriott said the Evangelical understanding of the Gospel was tainted by the “white patriarchy.” 

“What we see more and more is that the good news that a specific variety of Christianity is professing in the world is white patriarchy,” she said. “So white masculine power, violence, dominance, over and against.”

She also downplayed biblical writings of the Apostle Paul, calling  him a “great guy and all” but “a product of his time.” 

President Donald Trump accused Iran of waging an aggressive disinformation campaign using artificial intelligence during the ongoing conflict with the United States and Israel, taking direct aim at the American “corrupt media outlets” that were parroting the same misinformation.

In a lengthy post on Truth Social, Trump said Iran has increasingly relied on AI-generated content and propaganda distributed through sympathetic media outlets and social media accounts.

“Iran has long been known as a master of media manipulation and public relations,” Trump wrote. “They are militarily ineffective and weak, but are really good at feeding the very appreciative fake news media false information.”

Trump specifically pushed back on viral imagery circulating online that purported to show U.S. military losses during the conflict, including claims that multiple American refueling aircraft had been destroyed. The president said those reports, including one attributed to The Wall Street Journal, were false. “The five U.S. refueling planes that were supposedly struck down and badly damaged … are all in service, with the exception of one, which will soon be flying the skies,” Trump said.

The president also rejected widely shared images claiming the U.S. Navy’s aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln had been struck and set ablaze.

“Buildings and Ships that are shown to be on fire are not — It’s FAKE NEWS, generated by A.I. For instance, Iran, working in close coordination with the Fake News Media, shows our great USS Abraham Lincoln Aircraft Carrier, one of the largest and most prestigious Ships in the World, burning uncontrollably in the Ocean.”

Trump went further, suggesting that American media outlets that knowingly amplify false propaganda during wartime should face serious consequences. “The story was knowingly fake and, in a certain way, you can say that those media outlets that generated it should be brought up on charges for treason for the dissemination of false information,” he wrote.

His comments come as analysts warn that AI-generated propaganda has become a major feature of the information war surrounding the conflict. A widely circulated video appearing to show a high-rise building in Bahrain engulfed in flames after an Iranian missile strike was later determined to be AI-generated and shared by accounts linked to the Iranian government, according to researchers tracking online influence campaigns.

Experts said the video contained several visual anomalies typical of AI-generated content, including vehicles appearing fused together and human movements that defied normal physics.

Melanie Smith of the Institute for Strategic Dialogue said state-linked influence operations are increasingly using AI tools to amplify political narratives during wartime.

“The content that’s coming from state actors tends to be a little better targeted,” Smith said. “They have a very clear narrative structure and the videos are used to support some kind of statement they want to make about the conflict.” Researchers say pro-Iran accounts have circulated numerous fabricated clips showing air strikes and military successes in an effort to exaggerate damage inflicted on U.S. and Israeli targets.

Analysts warn that the growing flood of AI-generated content is making it harder for the public to distinguish real battlefield developments from fabricated propaganda. “The volume of AI content is starting to just pollute the information environment in these kinds of crisis settings to a really terrifying degree,” Smith said.

Some social media platforms have begun responding to the surge in misinformation. Nikita Bier, head of product at X, announced that users who post AI-generated content related to armed conflicts without disclosure could be suspended from the platform’s revenue-sharing program.

Meanwhile, Emerson Brooking of the Atlantic Council warned that social media has effectively become another battlefield. “If you’re in these spaces, just understand that this is an extension of the physical battle space,” Brooking said. “Your eyeballs and your attention are an asset.”

Trump praised Brendan Carr, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, for reviewing broadcast licenses held by outlets he accused of spreading false information. “They get billions of dollars of free American airwaves and use it to perpetuate lies,” Trump wrote, arguing that the Iranian government is attempting to win an information war even as its military suffers setbacks on the battlefield.

“The fact is, Iran is being decimated,” Trump wrote. “And the only battles they ‘win’ are those they create through A.I.”

As the conflict unfolds both on the battlefield and across social media feeds, the struggle over information is just another front to wrestle public opinion into despair and confusion; over what’s real, what’s fabricated, and who controls the narrative.