Drenda Keesee
Molly Butler/Media Matters

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Podcast host and Ohio county commissioner nominee has pushed baseless conspiracy theories and compared the LGBTQ movement to Hitler

Right-wing pastor Drenda Keesee is running unopposed for the seat

Right-wing pastor and podcast host Drenda Keesee, who is running uncontested in November for a Knox County, Ohio, commissioner seat, has spread unhinged conspiracy theories about climate change, abortion, “satanic hordes” causing people to identify as LGBTQ, and global elites working to bring about a “New World Order.” 

Notably, Keesee has claimed that solar farms are part of a plot to “create” food and energy shortages, said LGBTQ people “sentence themself to hell,” compared the LGBTQ movement to Adolf Hitler, and labeled the feminist movement an “occultic agenda” to “get women to fight to kill their children.” Keesee is also a proponent of the “Seven Mountain Mandate,” a theological approach that calls on Christians to impose fundamentalist values on all aspects of American life.

Keesee is running unopposed in November to be a Knox County commissioner after winning her primary on an anti-solar farm platform. Several local media reports have failed to document Keesee’s extreme rhetoric and views, including one from the local NPR affiliate covering her primary win. 

Below are several examples of Keesee spreading extreme conspiracy theories about LGBTQ people, a “New World Order,” climate change, and abortion.

  • Keesee has pushed bigotry and conspiracy theories about LGBTQ people, including that “satanic hordes” and “demonic spirits” cause people to be trans

    • Keesee claimed that “satanic hordes” and “demonic spirits” cause children to identify as trans and commit violence. Keesee warned that “children’s spirits” and souls are “at stake,” declaring that “demonic spirits are attacking them and satanic hordes are infiltrating them and even possessing their bodies, which is why we’re seeing more violence among youth, we’re seeing trans violence.” Keesee denied that people can be trans, saying that “you can change their hairstyle, you can do all kinds of surgeries on the outside, but it cannot change what God created a person.” [Drenda On Guard, 10/27/23]
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    Citation From the October 27, 2023, edition of Drenda On Guard

    • Keesee suggested that LGBTQ people are following “Satan’s agenda” and will be in “eternal hell” and “the lake of fire” if they don’t “repent” before Jesus returns. In a Facebook livestream, Keesee called it “abominations” and “Satan’s plan” “when a man lies with a man” and when people “experiment with bodies and change them from what God designed them to create — be created male and female,” seemingly in reference to gay and transgender people. She emphasized that when they “reject God and receive Satan’s agenda … They actually sentence themself to hell.” [Facebook, 9/7/21]
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    Citation From a September 7, 2021, Facebook Live video

    • Keesee called the LGBTQ movement “a cult” and gender-affirming care “hideous, occultic, satanic indoctrination.” During an episode of her podcast, Keesee recounted a story of a child questioning their sexual orientation and gender identity, claiming the child had been coached at school. Keesee claimed that one of the World Economic Forum’s “agendas” is to make children “question the most basic things of humanity,” including “whether they’re even male and female,” in order to “bring us into transhumanism.” [Drenda On Guard, 11/17/23]
    • Keesee compared the LGBTQ movement to Adolf Hitler and said the movement is trying to “turn” children “against God and parents.” Keesee claimed that the LGBTQ movement is pushing its agenda “into early ages because just like Hitler, they know if you're gonna mold a child, you mold them at the youngest age you can.” Keesee added that “it makes [her] want to put on [her] boxing gloves” because children are being “bombarded constantly with messaging that makes them question whether they're a male or female.” She claimed that schools pressure kids to identify as LGBTQ through “propaganda” that is “introduced in their classroom every day — the rainbow movement, teachers wearing, you know, rainbow, questioning their gender in everyday conversations in school.” [Drenda On Guard, 11/17/23]
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    Citation From the November 17, 2023, edition of Drenda On Guard

    • Keesee claimed that Satan “is really the author” of LGBTQ inclusion and declared that support for LGBTQ people is a sign of “the last days.” Keesee lamented “this whole push of LGBTQ on our daughters and our sons,” and declared that it is “Satan who is really the author of this.” Keesee also said that she saw “a church with steps that were painted rainbow,” noting that, “Jesus said in the last days there would be great heresy, great apostasy … Satan is playing hard for the souls of men and women and especially children.” [Drenda On Guard, 12/15/23]
  • Keesee has promoted the “New World Order” conspiracy theory about a totalitarian world government, connecting it to LGBTQ inclusion and efforts to curb climate change

  • According to the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, “Proponents of the ‘New World Order’ conspiracy believe a cabal of powerful elite figures wielding great political and economic power is conspiring to implement a totalitarian one-world government.” Conspiracy theorists frequently attribute global events such as the COVID-19 pandemic and climate change to the “New World Order.” The conspiracy theory also often incorporates antisemitic narratives.

    • Keesee suggested that solar farms are part of a New World Order plot to “create” energy and food shortages. She claimed that solar farms “don't produce crops” but “destroy the actual dirt and soil of the richest farmland in America,” declaring that “they do that because they're trying to create a food shortage, so they can create an energy shortage.” Keesee assured her audience that “the globalists, in the end, will not get their way. A new world is coming, but it's not going to be their great reset, their fourth industrial revolution, their New World Order. It's going to be the king setting up his kingdom.” [Drenda On Guard, 3/29/24]
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    Citation From the March 29, 2024, edition of Drenda On Guard

    • Keesee claimed that abortion, “LGBTQ agendas,” critical race theory, and “the climate emergency” are part of the plot to “bring us into the New World Order” and “destroy” America. In an episode titled “They Want To Enslave Humanity?!” Keesee said that through critical race theory, abortion, and “LGBTQ agendas,” global elites are trying to “destroy” the nation “like Hitler did with Germany.” She claimed that elites are attempting to “bring us into the New World Order” and that “it's not a conspiracy theory.” Keesee also claimed that there’s an agenda “to make government God” and “remove parents,” to “weaponiz[e] the children then against our country.” [Drenda On Guard, 11/17/23]
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    Citation From the November 17, 2023, edition of Drenda On Guard

    • Keesee said that the “climate agenda,” support for trans children, and porn addiction are part of an effort to “destroy the Republic of the United States of America in order to bring us into their New World Order, their great reset.” Keesee decried the affirmation of trans children, saying, “Transgendering, transitioning, gender-affirming, whatever — they keep changing the names and make it sound more and more beautiful and wonderful and affirming in love. It's not love. It's lust.” She claimed that “the climate agenda,” “the crisis of pornography,” and “transgendering” are “tied to how they bring about the New World Order” to “bring down free nations, and get them to give up their freedom, and their freedom over their children.” [Drenda On Guard, 10/27/23]
  • Keesee is a proponent of the Christian nationalist “Seven Mountain Mandate”

  • The “Seven Mountain Mandate” is a “quasi-biblical blueprint for theocracy” that asserts that Christians must impose fundamentalist values on American society by conquering the “seven mountains” of cultural influence in U.S. life: government, education, media, religion, family, business, and entertainment. Several Republican public officials have come under scrutiny for their connections to the Seven Mountain Mandate, including House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) and Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Tom Parker.

    • Keesee has made the Seven Mountain Mandate central to her commentary in right-wing media. Right Wing Watch reported that “Keesee’s main focus” is on “promoting Seven Mountains Dominionism,” and highlighted various instances in which Keesee has pushed the Seven Mountain Mandate. In a recent appearance on the Christian nationalist program FlashPoint, for example, Keesee claimed that the “hand of God” was responsible for her victory because Christians must take “our place in the [seven] mountains of influence and leadership” in order to save America. [Right Wing Watch, 3/26/24]
    • Keesee is the author of Fight Like Heaven!, which lays out the Seven Mountain Mandate and “shows you precisely how to fight like heaven, kick hell out, and take back these mountains for the Kingdom of God!,” per the book’s description on Amazon. The Amazon description notes that the book “identifies the Seven Mountains of Influence that the Antichrist spirit has invaded.” [Amazon, accessed 4/5/24]
    • Keesee has also repeatedly promoted the Seven Mountain Mandate on social media and encouraged followers to “take the mountains to influence others for Christ.” For example, last summer, Keesee wrote: “We have a choice: give control to God or the adversary. The seven mountains—government, economy, health, education, media, and family—can be influenced by either force. Let's unite as a church, conquer each mountain with grace, and reclaim them for God's Kingdom!” [Twitter/X, 6/26/22, 6/13/23]
  • Keesee said the feminist movement is a “demonic, occultic agenda” to “get women to fight to kill their children”

    • Keesee said that feminism “shakes its fist in the face of God” and suggested women should come “under the covering of men.” Keesee said that feminism makes women selfish and invoked Satan, saying, “It is a selfishness that says, just like Satan said in Isaiah 9 … ‘I'll make my throne above God's throne,’ and it is us enthroning ourselves.” Keesee also expressed agreement with her guest that feminism is a “perversion of God's word,” and went on to complain that “women don’t know how to be a woman of God that comes under the covering of men.” [Drenda On Guard, 5/12/23]
    • Keesee called the feminist movement and abortion a “hideous, demonic, occultic agenda” to “get women to fight to kill their children.” Keesee called feminism “demonic to the core” and asserted that “Satan wants to divide the male, the female, emasculate the men, remove them as the protector — the defender, the strong voice, to protect their kids — and get women to want to attack their own God-given right to bear children.” [Drenda On Guard, 11/17/23]
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    Citation From the November 17, 2023, edition of Drenda On Guard