Rev. Babs Miller, "Minister to the Parish" at St. Andrews Presbyterian Church in Austin, Texas, stood before her congregation and said this: "We still have people in this church who wish that the young man had not just nicked his ear, but had been more successful."

She was talking about Thomas Matthew Crooks, the 20-year-old who tried to murder President Trump at a Pennsylvania rally in 2024.

The church in question isn't some obscure storefront nobody's heard of. St. Andrews Presbyterian has been led for 35 years by Rev. Jim Rigby — the man Texas Democrat and U.S. Senate candidate James Talarico calls his "mentor." Talarico has attended since he was two years old. This is his spiritual home. These are his people. And his people's pastor just expressed open disappointment that a presidential assassination attempt failed.

Miller also told her congregation that most members of the church identify as "agnostic or atheist" rather than Christian — which raises the obvious question of what, exactly, is being preached from that pulpit every Sunday. The answer, based on Talarico's own public statements, includes claims that "God is a girl" and "God is non-binary." The church displays a Pride flag on its cross.

Senator Ted Cruz brought CNN's own reporting on Talarico and these church connections directly to anchor Kaitlan Collins. Collins, rather than engaging with the substance of what a Democratic Senate candidate's pastor said on the record about assassinating a president, ran interference. The network that spent years wringing its hands about "threats to democracy" and "political violence" suddenly found the topic uninteresting when the violence being endorsed came from the left.

The Cruz-Collins exchange laid bare exactly how the coverage game works. CNN reports a story. A Republican cites that story on CNN's own air. CNN's anchor treats the Republican like he's the problem. The pastor wishing death on a president? Background noise.

There's a version of this story where a Republican candidate's pastor said she wished someone had successfully assassinated a Democratic president. We all know what that version looks like. Wall-to-wall coverage. Demands for resignation. Every Republican in the country forced to answer for it on camera. The candidate's career would be over before the news cycle ended.

Talarico doesn't get that treatment. He gets media hosts running interference for him.

The theological window dressing almost makes it worse. This isn't a random political operative caught on a hot mic. This is a minister — someone whose job title literally means spiritual shepherd — standing in a house of worship and normalizing the murder of a sitting president. Not in a private conversation. Not in a moment of anger. From the front of the room, to the congregation, as a statement of shared sentiment.

A church where the pastor celebrates assassination and most members don't believe in God. A Senate candidate who calls the leader of that church his mentor since childhood. A cable network that won't touch the story when it's their own reporting.

Somewhere, the word "Presbyterian" is doing a lot of heavy lifting.