While You Were All Distracted by Steve Bannon...

... the Trumble/Shorten crew have been supping with the devil himself this weekend. Here's what you should know about Mike Pence:

1)

"Trump is a Trojan horse for a cabal of vicious zealots who have long craved an extremist Christian theocracy, and Pence is one of its most prized warriors. [...]

"Pence has claimed that he wants to 'economically isolate' Iran rather than engage in a military attack. But should Israel decide to conduct pre-emptive strikes against Iran's nuclear facilities, he said in 2010, 'if the world knows nothing else, let the world know this: that America will stand with Israel.' He supported a failed legislative effort to make it U.S. policy 'to use all means necessary to confront and eliminate nuclear threats posed by the Islamic Republic of Iran, including the use of military force.' Both in rhetoric and policy, Pence has compared 'radical Islam' to the 'evil empire of the Soviet Union' and said that he and Trump will 'name the enemy' and 'marshal the resources of our nation and our allies to hunt them down and destroy them before they threaten us'." (Mike Pence will be the most powerful Christian supremacist in US history, Jeremy Scahill, theintercept.com, 16/11/16)

2)

"While one might expect Jewish leaders to keep their distance from a popular Christian pastor with extremist views such as these, [John] Hagee has been closely embraced by Israeli governments (Netanyahu is a fixture at CUFI [Christians United for Israel] conventions), Jewish American politicians (Former Senator Joseph Lieberman has referred to Hagee as a modern-day Moses) and prominent American Jewish leaders (Elie Weisel once called Hagee 'my pastor.')

"CUFI's Jewish Executive Director, David Brog, clearly serves to give cover to Christian Zionists, painting them as 'mainstream' and not nearly as scary as their beliefs would indicate. Following the outcome of the recent election, however, Brog seems to smell blood in the water; he recently announced CUFI's plans to get 'a little more aggressive' in pushing its policies with the Trump administration, where it has clout and connections, particularly with evangelical Vice President Mike Pence.

"To put it mildly, Jews should be among the least of those who would seek to find common cause with one such as Mike Pence. In an extremely important piece for the Intercept, last November, reporter Jeremy Scahill convincingly argued that Pence is 'the most powerful Christian supremacist in US history,' concluding: 'The implications of a Pence vice presidency are vast. Pence combines the most horrid aspects of Dick Cheney's worldview with a belief that Tim LaHaye's Left Behind novels are not fiction, but an omniscient crystal ball.'

"It should not come as a surprise that the Pence family's last trip to Israel was funded by, you guessed it, John Hagee. Pence, who was then the governor of Indiana, took the time to meet with Netanyahu during his visit. Now connect those dots to Pence's meeting with the Israeli prime minister during his recent visit to DC. Both Pence and Netanyahu later commented that they met to discuss, among other things, the creation of a 'mechanism' that would help the White House and Israel better coordinate construction in the settlements on the West Bank." (Apocalyptic extremism: no longer a laughing matter, Rabbi Brant Rosen, rabbibrant.com, 27/2/17)

See also Trump & Pence had a Jewish connection before a political one - and it's steeped in the Holocaust (mondoweiss.net, 24/4/17)