“There is nothing Christian about Christian nationalism – it is the pursuit of power in the name of Jesus… … Jesus in Matthew 25 tells us exactly how you and I, and our fellow believers, are going to be judged and how we are going to be saved. By feeding the hungry, by healing the sick, by welcoming the stranger. Nothing about going to church, nothing about voting Republican. It was all about how you treat other people.”

Echoing the message of Pope Leo XVI opposing the US version of ‘Christian Nationalism’, James Talarico, Democratic candidate for the US Senate in Texas, allegedly triggered an attempt at censorship by the Republican party in mid February 2026. The apparent ‘pulling’ of an interview with Talarico by CBS on Stephen Colbert’s ‘Late’ show on Monday Feb 16th led to Colbert going ahead with the interview and sending it to YouTube – where it was viewed millions of times in the days after.

“I think that Donald Trump is worried that we are about to flip Texas,” said Talarico to Colbert. “And this is the party that ran against cancel culture. And now they are trying to control what we watch, what we say, what we read. And this is the most dangerous kind of cancel culture – the kind that comes from the top.”

Firmly supporting the principle of separation of church and state that undergirds the 1787 US Constitution, Presbyterian seminarian Talarico was urged to run for the US presidency by podcaster Joe Rogan months earlier.  This message runs counter to the Trump campaign for Christian support for the principle of ‘America first’ and the hardest possible line on immigration to the US – extending to the heavily-resourced pursuit of undocumented immigrants in Democratic-majority cities such as Minneapolis.

To watch the complete interview of James Talarico by Stephen Colbert on YouTube, click here.