Anderson, South Carolina, USA John Mark Burns is an American evangelical minister, televangelist and politician who is the pastor of the Harvest Praise & Worship Center in South Carolina. He was an early supporter of Donald Trump during the 2016 United States presidential election and by 2023 was a board member of Pastors for Trump.
Burns unsuccessfully ran for the United States House of Representatives in South Carolina's 4th congressional district in 2018 and 2022. He unsuccessfully ran to represent the 3rd congressional district in the 2024 election. He is co-founder of the NOW Television Network.
In November 2020, during the 2020 presidential election, Burns made claims of voter fraud. He tweeted his concern towards "those who seek to undermine the sacred election process in our democracy" and shared that "President Trump is the clear winner of this 2020 Presidential election".
After the January 6 United States Capitol attack, Burns was among those who advanced the idea that people associated with antifa were responsible for the attack.
In a 2022 interview with far-right internet personality Stew Peters, Burns called for the arrest of supportive parents of transgender children, comparing them and pro-LGBTQ teachers to the leaders of the Hitler Youth. He further called for their conviction for treason, reminding Peters that the penalty for treason is death.
Despite having initially been "on record as being one of the staunch opponents of supporting Ukraine" during the Russo-Ukrainian War, following a personal visit to the country Burns admitted that he had been "brainwashed by fake news media about Ukraine" with regards to allegations of suppression of religious faith and atrocities being committed by Russia, declaring as a result his opinion of Vladimir Putin to be "Evil, pure evil".
This article uses material from the Wikipedia article Mark_Burns_(pastor), which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License
