Mean Tweets: Why I Blocked Christian Pitbull Megan Basham
Person responds to Basham's attack, "“I was being mean and a bad person on X. You did it much better so I am going to delete my tweet.”
“I like your Christ; I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.” ― Mahatma Gandhi
Megan Basham is the type of Christian who, from my personal experience, can sometimes give Christians a bad name.
Because she did not like my reporting, even though she knew absolutely nothing about me, she recently tried to falsely label me as a serial adulterer who jumps from one marriage to another. Her defense: she reached that conclusion because that’s what AI led her to believe.
Basham also falsely claimed that I somehow “need” hate groups “to keep [my] little website going,” despite the fact that my award-winning reporting on the rise of hate in America has resulted in death threats against me and my family. I have neither the “need” to fabricate that hate, nor a “need” for it in my life.
Sadly, my experience is not the first time that the self-described “journalist” has faced questions about her heavy-handed and, many would say, cruel approach. (More on that at the bottom of this post.)
A commentator for the right-wing Daily Wire and a self-described evangelical “church lady,” Basham positions herself as an arbiter of what is true Christianity. She engages in what she calls “debate” with a take-no-prisoners vengeance to which anyone who has a differing viewpoint must submit—or be destroyed.
Such viciousness is often chum in the water for her 206,000 X followers, who can get worked up into a feeding frenzy around the targets of her wrath.
Take, for example, her recent baseless insistence that the federal indictment of the Southern Poverty Law Center showed the legendary civil rights organization paid people “to organize protests and transport [people] to those protests.”
Basham did not appreciate my own post that conclusively showed that MAGA influencers like her were twisting the words of the indictment—a conclusion that, to this day, she refuses to acknowledge.
How it started
Her response was to attack me professionally and personally.
“Over the last few days I have explained to a couple of evangelicals relying on his reporting that Phil Williams is not a reputable reporter but a one-man hit job factory against conservative Christians,” she posted on X on April 22 in what she herself described as an “argument AGAINST”—in all caps— my credibility.
Her post indicated she had not actually understood what I had written in the essay she was trying to rip apart.
An anonymous account came to my defense.
“First off, you do not know [Phil] Williams at ALL. He is the most stand up Christian caring human being I’ve ever met,” the person wrote.
That’s when Basham questioned whether I was the right kind of Christian.
“If @PhilNvestigates is a Christian, he is of the mainline sort that argues that homosexuality and abortion are compatible with Christianity,” she responded.
Online, she has repeatedly demanded that I respond to her speculation about my personal beliefs.
I have never publicly discussed the details of my faith; that’s between my priest and myself. Still, Basham apparently comes from the politically driven mindset that those issues are the only ones that define who counts as a real Christian.
The next day, as the MAGA backlash against my reporting on the SPLC indictment continued, another detractor suggested that I must be gay—again, as if that was somehow relevant to the accuracy of my reporting.
“Phil is not gay but he has had three wives,” Basham responded.
Even the original tweeter was taken aback.
“I was being mean and a bad person on X,” the person responded. “You did it much better so I am going to delete my tweet.”
Later, I called out Basham for her personal attack, noting that “my second wife died, and I found the person with whom I want to spend the rest of my life.”
What happened to my first marriage at an early age is nobody’s business—even though some of her followers continued to demand that I provide an explanation.
In response to my post, Basham apologized for using the word “but”—not for telling her followers that I had three wives! She claimed she was simply defending me against an anonymous tweeter’s accusation that I was gay.
“I did not know one of your wives died. I’m sorry that happened to you,” she wrote.
Still, when pressed about her apology for the “but,” the Christian influencer—who has repeatedly defended thrice-married MAGA figures Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth—admitted she was implying that I was a serial adulterer.
“Just admit that you were calling him an adulterer and apologize for that,” an anonymous account tweeted. “Don’t apologize for including the word ‘but.’ This is why people have such low regard for Christians and Christianity these days.”
Basham answered, “Yes, that was my implication yes. And that’s why I apologized for saying but.”
Even in that moment, she was still unable to bring herself to offer an unambiguous apology.
Instead, Basham hinted it was still possible that my one and only divorce—what she repeatedly called my “first divorce”—might have been an adulterous one by her personal biblical standards.
“Now, I don’t know the circumstances of his first divorce, so it’s possible I may still think that,” she wrote. Her apology, she admitted, was only for “including the wife who died in that assessment” of my character.
In another tweet, Basham admitted she formulated her opinion because—get this—”AI told me he has had three wives.”
“I consider divorce for any reason beyond adultery or abandonment a form of adultery,” she explained.
Later, Basham responded to someone who was defending her and asking, “Since when is it wrong to state facts?””
“It wasn’t,” she agreed. “And I still may think that the grounds for Phil’s first divorce are not justified.”
What does a previous marriage have to do with my reporting on the Southern Poverty Law Center and the rise of hate in America?
Obviously, NOTHING!
Basham has previously argued that Trump’s multiple marriages and open affairs are irrelevant because “I don’t know many Christians holding Trump out as a moral exemplar that we should listen to on issues of a family and marriage.”
Instead, apparently for me, any hint of divorce was simply a handy weapon she could wield against someone she considered an enemy.
In the end, it was a reminder that hate can sometimes come to Main Street, pridefully wearing a shiny gold cross around its neck.
As I processed the exchanges, I found myself wondering whether, when Megan Basham finally puts her smartphone aside at the end of the night, does she tell herself that she was really Christ-like that day?
Or, in her mind, does she see herself as proverbially overturning the tables in the Temple, forgetting that the exercise of moral indignation by Jesus did not define every day of his 33 years on this earth?
Only she can answer those questions.
Is there a pattern here?
Of course, similar concerns were raised by Basham’s 2024 Shepherds for Sale: How Evangelical Leaders Traded the Truth for a Leftist Agenda. In it, she names names of evangelicals who, by her definition, have been “co-opted by political forces with explicitly secular progressive aims.”
Despite becoming a New York Times bestseller, Basham’s book faced brutal criticism for its numerous factual errors.
A review by The Dispatch argued, “It’s worth asking: If we can’t trust her with the basic facts, why should we trust her with the interpretation of these facts? Tennessean reporter Liam Adams noted, “Those who are accused of wavering have said Basham used quotes out of context, while others have criticized the author and publisher for sidestepping journalistic ethics.”
One of Basham’s targets, Pastor Gavin Ortlund, produced two video responses—including the one below after what he described as a “pile-on” on X that was generated by the Christian influencer’s continuing attacks on him.
“In the worst expressions of it, it kind of has the feel of people trying to drag you name through the mud,” Ortlund said in the video posted below. “It feels like a smear campaign, you know, just relentlessly cruel.”
Basham also faced intense criticism for naming a church sexual abuse survivor without the woman’s permission. That led to unsuccessful calls for the publisher, Harper Collins, to withdraw the book from the market.
“Naming a sex abuse survivor without her consent is completely unethical,” wrote Julie Roys, who runs a watchdog website devoted to sexual abuse in the church. She added, “I wish I could say I was surprised, but Basham has repeatedly shown disdain for survivors.”
The Tennessean noted that Basham responded “by saying on social media those who publicly make accusations ‘should be obligated to stand behind them.’”
A book review on the Religion Unplugged website characterized Basham’s approach like this:
“She calls out individuals and institutions and repeatedly frames their left-wing views as necessarily ‘dupes or deceivers’ of one form or another. She agrees she doesn’t know if these examples are ‘literally’ bought and paid for but will only allow that they might be influenced by other negative motives, or—at best—fooled.
“Why can’t people ever simply have good-faith disagreements? She agrees in the introduction that such a thing is possible, but in practice largely ignores that possibility for the majority of the book.”
That, from my experience, is the central question about Megan Basham’s approach: Why does she not acknowledge that people can simply disagree, especially on matters of faith, in good faith?
Why does a Christian of all people feel the need to engage in the politics of personal destruction?
And how did she imagine it would be appropriate under any circumstances to hint that I was a serial adulterer when she knew nothing of my life?
A final note:
Yes, I have blocked Megan Basham on X because I have concluded that, in my opinion, it is simply not possible to have an honest conversation with her.
And I have no plans to respond further, no matter how vicious her attacks may become. I think there is generally great truth in the aphorism, “Never wrestle with a pig. You both get dirty, and the pig likes it.”
And, as a Christian, I honestly hope she can somehow find a way to bring more peace into her own life.
Finally, thank you to all who have come to my defense and offered words of encouragement. If you support my work, I hope that you will subscribe to “my little website” and will continue to follow me on this sometimes-difficult journey.