The Trump Loyalist Who’s Challenging Peter Meijer in Michigan
GRAND RAPIDS, Michigan—“Father, I just pray that you rain down fire on Peter Meijer’s campaign.”
It was Thursday evening, and Zach Lahring was praying for John Gibbs, the Donald Trump-endorsed challenger to Rep. Peter Meijer in Michigan’s 3rd Congressional District. Just days into his tenure in office in January 2021, Meijer was one of only 10 House Republicans to vote to impeach former President Donald Trump after the storming of the U.S. Capitol on January 6.
About four dozen people gathered to support Gibbs in Muskegon on Thursday at the Barclay Place Event Center. After Lahring, the county GOP chair, finished his prayer, the attendees all stood for the Pledge of Allegiance before rising from their seats again moments later to give Gibbs a standing ovation.
Gibbs proceeded to walk the audience through the highlights of his biography: earning a bachelor’s degree in computer science from Stanford and studying abroad in Japan, working for Palm and Apple in Silicon Valley, returning to Japan as an evangelical missionary, taking on the libs in the classrooms of Harvard’s Kennedy School while getting his master’s in public administration, and working at a high level in the Trump administration—mostly under Ben Carson at the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
