Author: Alexander C. Kaufman / Source: HuffPost
Rick Perry gets a lot of nice stuff. Back when he served as the governor of Texas, he received 22 pairs of cowboy boots, Stetson hats and belt buckles. He even got a TV.
During his first nine months as the secretary of the Department of Energy, Perry accepted more than 100 gifts. Dozens of books. A lapel pin stating “Trump will change US.” Energy Department-branded T-shirts.
The Saudi energy minister brought Perry a commemorative plaque. His Kazakh equivalent offered a green velveteen coat with a black mink collar. India’s minister of petroleum and natural gas presented a silver filigree peacock statuary in a Plexiglas box, which Perry displayed in his office.
Sure, that’s how foreign dignitaries make nice. But the gifts below ― revealed in records released under the Freedom of Information Act and reviewed by HuffPost ― are truly bizarre:
Texas preacher Irvin Baxter, the founder and president of End Time Ministries, gave Perry a DVD copy of “America’s God-Given Destiny,” a recording of his teachings on Armageddon.
In the film, Baxter, a long-time televangelist and self-proclaimed “international prophecy teacher,” predicts “there is another Jewish Holocaust coming” but that “all Jews who heed the warning of the prophecies will escape.” He prophesizes that Europe will become “the future power base of the Antichrist,” but says the “nations of Jordan and Israel will never be controlled by the Antichrist,” in part because “the U.S. will protect Israel from attack.”
“This lets us know that the U.S. will be opposed to the Antichrist during the time called the Great Tribulation,” he says. “This is wonderful news!”
Four days after Perry took charge of an agency he once vowed to abolish, a “science-loving National Laboratory employee” (whose name is not revealed) gave him a softcover copy of The ABCs of Particle Physics, an illustrated book published by Symmetry Magazine with funding from the Department of Energy.
An individual whose name was redacted and company listed as unknown gave Perry a hardcover copy…
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