Adam Hamilton, the Democratic Senate nominee in Kansas, said Monday it was “pathetic” for President Donald Trump to call him a “perverted pastor,” The Hill reported. Trump made the remark at a Sunday rally in Salina for Sen. Roger Marshall, where he also claimed Hamilton’s church paid for a drag queen story time.
“I think it’s sad, it’s pathetic to be calling a pastor a pervert and all the things that he’s been saying,” Hamilton told NewsNation’s Mills Hayes. He said he took Trump’s insults as an “honor.”
“I’ll just say, it doesn’t bother me,” Hamilton added. “I feel like that says more about him than it says about me.”
Trump’s Salina Claims About Adam Hamilton and Drag Queens
Trump spoke Sunday night from Hangar 509 at Salina Regional Airport, arriving around 8 p.m. after a rally in Iowa, KWCH reported. At his previous Kansas rally, in Park City on Oct. 19, he’d gone after Hamilton over trans issues.
“This is my 30th rally,” Trump told the Salina crowd. “And I’m closing it down tonight. This is it.” (The RNC had canceled the Kansas stop three days earlier, then put it back on the schedule.)
Trump claimed staff at the United Methodist Church of the Resurrection in Leawood, the megachurch Hamilton founded, were told never to say “boys and girls.” “This is at your church,” he told the crowd, which booed, according to the Roll Call Factba.se transcript.
“His record is like a trans person,” Trump said about a minute later.
Then he got to the drag. “And he even used church money to pay for a drag queen story time, and he knows the name of every drag queen,” Trump said. The crowd booed again. “I don’t think too many of the ministers and people of faith are into the world of drag queens,” he went on, after bringing up Billy Graham. (Knowing a queen’s name is just good manners.)
The line Hamilton answered came about half an hour later. “And before you vote for a possibly, possibly perverted pastor or pastor that’s caused a lot of problems with his church, a lot of problems,” Trump said, the transcript shows.
Townhall’s Undercover Video and an Omaha Drag Queen Story Hour
Hours before the rally, Townhall posted what it called an undercover video of a member of Resurrection’s pastoral staff. She talks about Urban Abbey, an affiliated church in Omaha, Nebraska, and the threats it got over its drag queen story hour. “Some of the drag queens are members of that church and so we sent money to help with security,” she says, as Townhall quoted her.
Townhall’s Kyle Olson didn’t say who recorded the video or how much money was sent. His story carried no response from the church or Hamilton’s Senate campaign. The police comment it cited came from a Great Plains Conference report about two bomb threats against Urban Abbey. An Omaha police spokesperson said, “There was nothing credible about any of this.” That report also described a police search of the building and plans for increased security.
Urban Abbey hadn’t held its story hour in a year, after bomb threats and personal threats against its pastor, Debra McKnight, UM Insight reported in December 2024. “Nationally, the temperature is too high,” McKnight said then.
Church of the Resurrection and the 2024 Same-Sex Wedding Vote
In May 2024, delegates to the United Methodist General Conference in Charlotte, North Carolina, struck the rule barring the denomination’s pastors from officiating same-sex weddings, The Associated Press reported. The old rule said, “Ceremonies that celebrate homosexual unions shall not be conducted by our ministers.”
Among Resurrection’s pastors, “some are ready to officiate at same-sex weddings,” Hamilton wrote in a May 3, 2024, update to the congregation. Others “may choose not to do this at this time,” he wrote.
“There’s room for people to have differences of opinion on things,” Hamilton said in an interview quoted by The Hill. “If you’re not in favor of same-sex marriage, then be who you are. But do it lovingly.”
Roger Marshall and Hamilton Close Out the Kansas Senate Race
Marshall took his own turn in the Salina hangar. “Freedom isn’t free, but guess what, freedom isn’t for sale either,” he said, KWCH reported. “This seat is now going to cost over $110 million.” Republicans have put nearly $7 million into transgender-themed spots in the race, which ran 7,000 times, an Associated Press analysis found Oct. 28, part of a national Republican push on anti-trans ads.
When the Salina rally was back on, Hamilton said, “The President is always welcome in Kansas,” KMUW reported. “I hope he takes the time to meet with Kansans who are being hurt by the policies coming out of Washington.”
“He’s come here at the end of a long day, and he’s come here desperately trying to save my opponent, Roger Marshall, and I don’t think that’s going to happen,” Hamilton said Monday, according to The Hill.
He called himself “cautiously optimistic” about Tuesday’s election. “I do think we have a really good chance to win on election night,” Hamilton said. “It’s going to be fun.”
