Mikey Weinstein Warns of Command Pressure, Christian Nationalism, and AI-Driven Militarization

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2026/03/01

Michael L. “Mikey” Weinstein is an undisputed leader of the national movement to restore the obliterated wall separating church and state in the most technologically lethal organization ever created by humankind: the United States armed forces. Described by Harper’s magazine as “the constitutional conscience of the U.S. military, a man determined to force accountability,” Mikey’s family has a long and distinguished U.S. military history spanning three consecutive generations of military academy graduates and over 130 years of combined active duty military service in every significant combat engagement our country has been in from World War I to the current Global War on Terror. Mikey is a 1977 Honour Graduate of the United States Air Force Academy. He left Mr. Perot’s employ in 2006 to focus his full-time attention on the nonprofit charitable foundation he founded to directly battle the far-right militant radical evangelical religious fundamentalists: the Military Religious Freedom Foundation.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen interviewed Michael L. “Mikey” Weinstein of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) about coercion, neutrality, and future weapons. Weinstein said service members reported superiors “strongly encouraging” attendance at politically charged documentary screenings, sometimes demanding proof, while the Pentagon denied any directive. He argued that even soft command pressure erodes constitutional nonpartisanship and can endanger careers. Turning to AI, drones, and autonomous systems, he warned that ideological capture would be “encoded” into design, amplifying supremacy at machine speed. He likened Christian nationalism in the force to a metastatic threat to democratic governance. His remedy: resist, document, and litigate.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What were the specific incidents that led the MRFF to publicly call out pressure on active service members to attend the “Melania documentary screenings?

Mikey Weinstein: As soon as the film began gaining traction, we started receiving outreach from service members—something that is common for us—asking what they should do.

We received reports from service members that their superiors were strongly encouraging attendance at screenings of Melania and, in some cases, treating it as functionally mandatory. Some service members said they were expected to show proof of attendance, such as ticket stubs or online confirmations. These accounts came from multiple installations and across different branches, not from a single unit type.

A Department of Defence official told reporters there was no directive requiring service members to watch the film.

Another journalist asked what our clients did. Many attended because they were concerned about professional consequences if they stood out or appeared noncompliant. Some attempted to avoid attendance by citing illness or family obligations, but many concluded that attending was the lower-risk option.

One service member described the screening being linked to a “Unit Activity Event”—a category of morale or cohesion event—and reported concern that skipping it could affect evaluations or standing within the unit.

Public awareness matters here. The film’s Rotten Tomatoes scores became part of the public discussion, with reporting highlighting the gap between audience scores and critic reviews, as well as questions about how attendance was being mobilized.

It is also essential for readers unfamiliar with military norms to understand that the U.S. military is expected to maintain a nonpartisan posture and command climate. That is why allegations of command pressure around a politically charged cultural product raise serious concerns. The Pentagon has denied any official requirement to attend.

Charlie Kirk was shot and killed at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah, on September 10, 2025. In the hours following his death, reporting noted that Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth appeared with troops in a public religious context.

They bowed their heads and prayed for him. The fact is that Dwight D. Eisenhower was a five-star general, the commander of the entire U.S. military, and he had never voted for president until he voted for himself when he ran. He felt strongly that the military should be nonpartisan. When you start viewing the military as a praetorian guard meant to serve Caesar rather than the Constitution, something fundamental has gone wrong.

The oath is not taken to a particular version of Christianity. The oath of office and the enlistment oath are taken from the U.S. Constitution. Every member of the military swears to the Constitution. Every civilian who enters government service does the same. We are a constitutional republic. That is the foundation.

What we are seeing now is an effort to turn the military into a Christian nationalist force. That is the real war taking place, and they have largely succeeded. If you are not a Christian nationalist—if you are not a straight, white, Christian male—you stand out.

We had seventeen clients in the room in Quantico, Virginia, when Pete Hegseth demanded that all generals, admirals, and senior enlisted advisers attend so he could speak. Trump appeared as well. The audience sat stone-faced.

Roughly twenty percent of senior military leadership—generals and admirals—are fully committed Christian nationalist MAGA adherents. Of the remaining eighty percent, most are pretending to comply because they do not want to jeopardize their retirement or their families. They rationalize their silence. The final group—about twenty percent—remain in service because they care deeply about their subordinates. They know that if they leave, they will be replaced by full-on MAGA leadership that would torment those under their command.

This is a profession in which people are expected to give their lives for their fellow citizens. Injecting Christian nationalism into the U.S. military is, as I describe it, like injecting cancer into the corporeal form of the most technologically lethal organization ever created by Homo sapiens. This is not a small matter.

Jacobsen: What risks do you see emerging as artificial intelligence, robotics, drone systems, and autonomous weapons become more central to military operations—especially if ideological capture continues and humans remain deeply embedded in the command loop?

Weinstein: You are asking about AI and robotics—drone technology, satellite systems, and autonomous platforms. That is an important question.

If a MAGA-dominated military, rooted in the worst elements of Christian nationalism—such as the New Apostolic Reformation and the Seven Mountains Mandate—controls these systems, then the ideology will shape the technology. These systems will not be built on principles of equality, diversity, or inclusion. They will reflect dogma.

People often do not want to learn about these movements because the details are overwhelming. But you cannot separate ideology from design. A robotic offensive capability will mirror the values of those who control it.

We have seen this explored in popular culture—The Terminator, The Matrix, and other films—but you are currently in Ukraine, which is years ahead of the cutting edge in drone warfare. This is essentially a drone war. The advances made there—often by young people—are extraordinary. Drones are being developed that can recover bodies from the battlefield. I have seen this.

If the U.S. military advances technologically at this pace, incorporating drones, robotics, and AI, the outcome is straightforward: these systems will be governed by the parameters and protocols of those in power. And those individuals openly reject even acknowledging systemic prejudice, bigotry, or historical injustice.

They claim that focusing on ethnicity, culture, or religion is divisive, insisting instead on a false universality. That framing is itself another form of racism and exclusion. We have seen this before. The difference now is that we have social media, advanced automation, and unprecedented technological reach.

You are the first journalist to ask me that question, and it matters. Any AI, robotics, or military technology developed under this framework will inevitably reflect MAGA-style supremacy. That ideology is an alloy: white, straight, Christian, and male. That is the simple answer.

Jacobsen: You referenced earlier the British and Roman Empires as the two major military powers most comparable to the United States before its rise. That prompted a thought.

I was once an executive in a minor political party in British Columbia, Canada, before it dissolved honourably. During that time, we held a private meeting with several other minor parties—groups that had effectively become advocacy parties rather than electoral forces. Three hereditary elders from an Indigenous band visited us to speak.

In their tradition, younger brothers speak on behalf of elder brothers because interrupting elders is considered deeply disrespectful. I later interviewed a couple of them and gained insight into their perspectives. Some communities remain intentionally isolated—not out of animosity, but by choice. There is a sense of “you do your thing, we will do ours.”

One of the elders referred to North American white culture—Canada and the United States broadly—as “the Romans.” That framing struck me. It suggests a different chronological and civilizational perspective, one that may be more detached and therefore more diagnostic.

When outsiders view us that way, are they seeing parallels to the flaws of Roman civilization during its decline? Are some of those mistakes being repeated now?

Weinstein: Constantine was the figure who fused Christianity with the military and political power of the Roman Empire. He did so essentially under his mother, Helena’s, influence. There is an important book, Constantine’s Sword, published in the early 2000s, and a 96-minute documentary by the same name. That documentary focuses in part on my family and our early fight at the Air Force Academy, and it addresses this exact issue.

If the United States comes to be viewed as a fundamentalist Christian military power, that will play directly into the narratives promoted by Islamic extremists and other adversaries. It makes it far easier to cast us as “the other.”

For generations—certainly since World War II, and even going back to World War I—the United States was seen not as the saviour of democracy, but as a principal carrier of democratic ideals: equality before the law, political pluralism, and legitimacy regardless of race, religion, or origin. That perception has been shattered.

This is not something that a midterm election will fix. The damage is generational. I have four children and three grandchildren, and I often wonder what kind of America—if any—will exist for them.

We live in a small world now. Isolationism and nativism do not operate in a vacuum. Everything affects everyone else. The Monroe Doctrine should be a historical artifact, not a living mindset—the idea that we control an entire hemisphere. That way of thinking no longer matches reality.

It is terrifying to create this inextricable mixture—this intertwining of military power, state authority, and corporate interests. That is, by definition, fascism.

In his farewell address, President Dwight D. Eisenhower issued what was arguably the most critical warning of his career. He cautioned the nation about the military–industrial complex. Companies like General Dynamics, Boeing, and Lockheed Martin becoming embedded in the essence of the state is straight out of the fascist playbook.

What we are confronting now is a fundamentalist Christian parent–church–military–corporate–congressional proselytizing complex. It is pervasive and dangerous—not just to this country, but to the world.

By dangerous, I do not mean symbolic harm. I mean the prospect of massive, real violence. Not streams or creeks of blood, but rivers—oceans of blood. This vision aligns disturbingly well with fundamentalist Christian nationalist theology. In their eschatology, the Battle of Armageddon promises a river of blood 200 miles long and several feet deep, produced by what they see as a weaponized Jesus slaughtering unbelievers. That is an obsession and a lust.

This is why your earlier question matters. We have seen imperial collapse before. Neither the Romans nor the British Empire had artificial intelligence, robotics, or autonomous weapons. They could not encode dogma directly into killing machines. We do.

We have not seen a nuclear explosion since Nagasaki. It is increasingly complex to believe that restraint will hold indefinitely. You are in a country right now where the use of a tactical nuclear weapon is often discussed as a real risk. Air raid alarms interrupt interviews. That alone should be sobering.

The United States was founded on a clear separation between the spiritual and the temporal. That principle is embedded in the First Amendment. Church and state are separated for a reason. The founders looked at European history—at Cromwell, at the Wars of Religion, at the Salem witch trials—and recognized that enormous bloodshed occurred when political power and religious authority were fused. They explicitly rejected that model.

Yet that is precisely what is happening now. Many Americans saw it coming. Too many chose disengagement. At this point, there is no neutral ground. You either resist or you collaborate. Choosing to do nothing is a form of collaboration.

This is far from over. Each day, the situation deteriorates. You are reporting from a country that mirrors many of these dynamics. I receive emails filled with antisemitic hatred—”filthy Jew,” over and over again. It is always Jews. When I ask about Ivanka Trump or Jared Kushner, who are Jewish, the messages stop. That silence tells you everything.

We are in a perilous moment. It must be confronted. People have to stand up and act.

Jacobsen: The late Singaporean leader Lee Kuan Yew once commented on what he called the United States’ “evangelistic zeal.” He was not referring narrowly to Christianity, but to a broader mix of religion, advertising, patriotism, and ideology—what might be called the impulse to proselytize “Americanism.” Drawing on your long experience with the U.S. military and those who serve in it, when does this system function well—and when does it break down?

Weinstein: You said it earlier in this interview. The military does not function unless it is politically impartial, and it must also be religiously impartial. There is no alternative.

George Washington understood this. He was the first to authorize chaplains in the military, a controversial decision even then. The problem, as he recognized, is pluralism. Depending on how you count, there are thousands of Christian denominations—some estimates reach tens of thousands. Without neutrality, favouritism and conflict are inevitable.

The military works only when it serves the Constitution alone.

Most of them do not even like one another. Northern Ireland is an obvious example. For centuries, Catholicism was effectively the only form of Christianity in Europe until Martin Luther and the Protestant Reformation. The word Catholic itself means universal, yet Catholicism also contains many internal divisions.

When you begin equating the U.S. military with a particular, weaponized version of Christianity—promoted by figures such as former three-star General Michael Flynn, Jerry Boykin, and others—you are not entering a slippery slope. You are in free fall. That free fall always ends in violence.

Our work is not about attacking anyone’s personal faith. We do not care what an individual believes. If someone wants to worship Spider-Man or an elm tree down the street, that is their business. What we care about is time, place, and manner.

Think of it the way you think about a driver’s license. A license does not allow you to drive whenever you want, however you want. You cannot drive while intoxicated, dangerously fatigued, or impaired by medication. Rights are regulated by time, place, and manner. The same applies to religious expression under the First Amendment.

Proselytizing—whether religious or ideological—cannot be imposed in settings where it coerces others. You cannot scream fire in a crowded theatre. That principle governs everything we do.

We do not care about anyone’s version of Jesus. Eighty-four percent of our staff are Christians. Our largest endorsing organization is the California Council of Churches Impact Organization, which represents approximately 5,500 Protestant churches across 21 denominations and nearly two million Protestants. The claim that my family or this foundation is hostile to Christians is simply false.

Our mission is to support the Constitution. When leaders like Lee Kuan Yew spoke of America’s evangelistic zeal, they were not only referring to religion, but to the tendency to export ideology and identity as moral truth. That tendency becomes especially dangerous when framed as a crusade.

Many extremist groups explicitly frame conflict with the United States as a continuation of the Crusades. Historically, there were seven major crusades. Casting modern conflict as an “eighth crusade” makes recruitment easier and violence easier to justify. It becomes a straightforward narrative: we are good, they are bad, and they are the crusaders.

We have intervened repeatedly to stop U.S. military units from using Crusader iconography. We stopped a Marine fighter squadron and an Air Force squadron from displaying Crusader imagery on aircraft fuselages and vertical stabilizers. We intervened at West Point. We stopped units at the Air Force Academy that dressed in Crusader costumes at football games. Removing Crusader symbolism goes directly to your question: it denies our enemies an easy propaganda tool.

If we appear political, or if we seem to favour one religious faith over others, we do so at immense peril. That peril is real, and the price is paid in blood.

Jacobsen: As a final point, it is worth remembering that the majority of deaths resulting from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars did not occur on the battlefield.

Weinstein: That point often gets overlooked. At one point, the United States was losing approximately 22 veterans a day to suicide. PTSD is very real. The human mind is difficult to understand, but history shows that nearly every religious tradition—possibly with the partial exception of Buddhism—has, at some point, been tied to violence. Even then, Sri Lanka reminds us that Buddhism has not been immune.

People are always trying to answer the same fundamental questions: where do we come from, what are we doing here, and where are we going? Radicalized Christian nationalism offers a particularly stark answer. It says you can be as brutal as Hitler, but if, in your final breath, you accept their version of Christianity, you receive eternal heaven. Conversely, you can live the best life imaginable, but if you do not take their weaponized Christ before death, you are condemned to eternal hell. That binary—good versus evil, saved versus damned—is profoundly dangerous.

When your military commander controls nearly every aspect of your life and your family’s life, this is not like having a shift manager at McDonald’s. You do whatever is necessary to avoid conflict because your livelihood is at stake. You are supporting a family. In many cases, both spouses are working, but the pressure remains constant.

Attacks on LGBTQ people, people of colour, and those who do not conform to Christian nationalism are severe. Ironically, most of our clients are Christians. They are targeted even more harshly because they refuse to advance to what Christian nationalists consider the highest level—the “level twenty” version of Christianity, which is Christian nationalism itself.

Jacobsen: Thank you very much for the opportunity and your time, Mikey. 

Weinstein: Stay in touch. I am glad you are doing what you are doing.

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