Glenn Beck believes that God brought about the death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia in order to encourage Americans to vote for Ted Cruz.
On Tuesday, the conservative radio host and Cruz supporter assumed the voice of God to explain to listeners how Scalia’s death was a divine wake up call for conservatives.
“I couldn’t help, but wonder, why? Why now? Why did you have to take Antonin now?” Beck’s co-host Pat Gray asked on the broadcast.
Beck, calling into the show from outside a church in Boston, said: “You know, I was listening to you guys, and I just want to say, Pat, I think I have an answer for you on that.”
Beck then took on the voice of the Lord: “I just woke the American people up. I took them out of the game show moment and woke enough of them up to say, ‘Look how close your liberty is to being lost,'” he said.
“The Constitution is hanging by a thread. That thread has just been cut. And the only way that we survive now is if we have a true constitutionalist (as president),” Beck said.
In a Facebook post late Wednesday night, Beck said it was “outrageous” to say that he had said God killed Scalia to help Ted Cruz.
“What I did say is ‘perhaps God allowed Scalia to die at this time to wake America up to how close we are to the loss of our freedom,'” Beck wrote. “I happen to believe in divine providence. Americans historically have. Maybe you do not. That is your choice and I do not mock you for not. Why mock me for believing in a traditional view of God?”
Beck, who has endorsed Cruz, often invokes God during speeches at the Texas senator’s campaign rallies, and has even claimed that Cruz’s birth was brought about by “the hand of divine providence.”
“Fall to your knees and pray to God to reveal to you what the hour is,” Beck recently told the audience at a rally in South Carolina. “This is your last call, America! Stand with the man I believe was raised for this hour, Ted Cruz!”
In South Carolina, as in Iowa, Cruz has been relying on the support of Beck and other influential right-wing radio pundits to help build out his conservative base.
Cruz won the Iowa caucuses earlier this month, buoyed largely by the support of the state’s evangelicals.