Fox News Attacks CNN’s ‘Hit Piece’ On Christian Nationalism With Misleading Edit

Fox News spent a segment Saturday night attacking a CNN documentary it chose not to show in full. That choice is itself an argument.

Kayleigh McEnany teed up CNN’s forthcoming The Whole Story episode on Christian nationalism by calling it a “hit piece on the resurgence of Christianity in America.” She questioned whether the documentary would include evidence of genuine spiritual revival rather than caricature. Then she rolled tape.

What viewers saw was a sliver of CNN’s teaser. What they did not see was the portion that directly addressed the very question McEnany raised.

CNN correspondent Pamela Brown interviewed Andrew McIlwain, an avowed Christian nationalist in Taylor, Texas. In the full promotional clip, McIlwain reflects on Charlie Kirk’s funeral: “Just the brutality of it. I mean, the way we had all these political leaders proclaiming the name of Christ at his funeral, it was amazing.” Brown follows up: “Do you think it marked a turning point for mission and for America?”

McIlwain answers in explicitly theological terms: “With the rise of interest in Christianity? I think there’s a sense that this way of life, the way America has been heading, that’s not the answer. Well, where is the answer? Well we find that answer in scripture in Christ.”

And then Brown delivers the line Fox’s audience never heard: “Kirk’s death happened at a moment of unprecedented alignment between Christian nationalists and the Trump administration.”

That sentence is not an aside. It is the documentary’s thesis in miniature. It clarifies that the project is not an attack on churchgoing or orthodox belief. It is an examination of the political alignment between a self-described Christian nationalist movement and executive power.

Fox cut it.

Instead, McEnany presented the film as an assault on faith itself and amplified a Georgetown professor’s warning about “radicalized” Christians. She insisted the framing was “so off base,” collapsing any distinction between Christianity as religion and Christian nationalism as an ideology seeking to shape public policy.

Sunday morning, viewers of Fox & Friends Weekend gave the CNN doc the same treatment, with duplicitous omissions. While Griff Jenkins allowed “And, look, in full context — we haven’t seen the whole thing but…” before criticizing the documentary. Charlie Hurt insisted that the documentary (he hadn’t watched) was evidence of “bigotry” against Christians.

By trimming Brown’s contextual line and McIlwain’s own articulation of a faith-centered political vision, Fox transformed a documentary about political theology into an imagined attack on believers. The audience was invited to reject a caricature while being shielded from the actual argument.

The central question Brown is asking — whether a movement that openly ties America’s future to “scripture” and enjoys “unprecedented alignment” with a presidential administration warrants scrutiny — never made it to the people most likely to vote on it.

Not all conservative Christians are preemptively aggrieved by Brown’s documentary treatment of Christian Nationalism. David Goodman, co-author of Sec of Defense Pete Hegseth’s book, Battle of the American Mind, said that the promotional segment was a fair treatment:

The CNN documentary airs Sunday evening at 8 PM.

Watch the original segment above via CNN.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.

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