I can appreciate the fact that Joe Lieberman has finished off the McCain Kool Aid. I also realize Lieberman is completely on board with everything McCain says, does, and believes, and will defend the Republican presidential campaign against any charge, regardless of merit.

KELLY: It’s great to have you again. I want to ask you about this Hagee thing before we get to the environment because it’s, you know, the late-breaking news of the day. The DNC already came out with a response to this saying this is insufficient, they want McCain to do more.

 

Let me show you what they said. They say, “unless John McCain’s idea of being a new kind of Republican includes cozying up to radicals who compare women to dogs, hold racially insensitive fundraisers and call one of the worst natural disasters in our country’s history God’s punishment, he should renounce John Hagee’s endorsement immediately.” They don’t seem prepared to let this die. Where do you think it stands? How do we go forward on this?

 

LIEBERMAN: Well, look, I think that the DNC is obviously doing this because they set Pastor Hagee as some kind of response to Reverend Wright Enhanced Coverage for Senator Obama. But I don’t think that’s fair in the basic way that everybody’s already said which is that never went to Pastor Hagee’s church. He accepted his endorsement. He represents a lot of people in this country, particularly Christians who care about the state of Israel. He founded a group called Christians United for Israel.

Hagee’s predictions are very clear. Armageddon, the final battle, could begin, he wrote in his 2007 book “Jerusalem Countdown,” “before this book gets published.”

 

The Antichrist “will be the head of the European Union,” he writes.

Using geographical calculations based on the Book of Revelation, he writes that Israel will be covered in “a sea of human blood” in the final battle.

 

The Jews, however, will survive the battle, Hagee says, long enough to have “the opportunity to receive Messiah, who is a rabbi known to the world as Jesus of Nazareth.”

“It was the disobedience and rebellion of the Jews, God’s chosen people, to their covenantal responsibility to serve only the one true God, Jehovah, that gave rise to the opposition and persecution that they experienced beginning in Canaan and continuing to this very day.”

[Hagee] argues that a strike against Iran will cause Arab nations to unite under Russia’s leadership, as outlined in chapters 38 and 39 of the Book of Ezekiel, leading to an “inferno [that] will explode across the Middle East, plunging the world toward Armageddon.” During his appearance on Hinn’s program at the end of last March, for example, the host enthused, “We are living in the last days. These are the most exciting days in church history,” but then went on to add, “We are facing now [the] most dangerous moment for America.” At one point, Hinn clapped his hands in delight and shouted, “Yes! Glory!” and then urged his viewers to donate money faster because he is running out of time to preach the gospel.