Having seen how popular a witch claim has become for Pastor Greg Locke, the self-proclaimed prophet Hank Kunneman has now popped up with his own spin on this. In his case, he claims that he has supposedly done better than the witches and warlocks consulted by an unnamed president.
He wants his audience to believe that he visited an unnamed “president of a nation.” and then proceeded to tell him things no other could. The truly fascinating thing here is that if his story is true, which I seriously doubt, then what he would be demonstrating is a classical “Hot reading” scam that is commonly practiced by fake psychics.
While his audience takes it all ever so seriously, and gasps at appropriate moments, it is in reality laughably funny stuff. Not by intent, but because it is so transparently BS.
Let’s take a look.
What Did he say?
Via Hemant once again we have a composite of the highlights crammed into a brief clip …
And here is the transcription …
That’s why I went one time… one time I was … one particular time I was taken in a back room, to speak to a particular president of a nation, and er, I was just sitting out, they said “Hank, the President wants to speak to you.”. I said, “Huh!”, I said “Now?” … “Yea”. “Now?” … “Yea”.
So I get in the back room, and he said “I’ve requested to speak to you. I’ve heard about you, I’ve heard about your ministry”. Ok. He said, “So, tell me, what do you have to say?”…
I went and I laid my hands a part of my faith, and I began to just speak and there was an anointing, it didn’t come on me, it came out of me … (audience reacts and whoops) … and I said, “the spirit of the Lord says there are six things that you have been thinking about, writing about, and they are even tucked away on your desk, and these are the six things …” boom boom boom boom boom boom. I took my hand off of him and he went like this (holds hands up) this president’s eyes got big. He said, “How did you know that?”…
Well, it was the Lord.
He said these words, and I’ll never forget it Brenda. He said, “I have sought … witches, I have sought warlocks, I have sought psychics, I have sought priests, I have sought ministers, AND NOBODY TOLD ME what was on my desk, and not only that, when you talk, not any one of them, you made my bones rattle.” (Audience goes wild)
A totally random unnamed president in some backroom, who seeks any and every religious nutter he can get his hands on! … I think he has World of Warcraft mixed up with reality once again.
Hot Reading 101
Let’s assume this was real. I have serious doubts, but we can park those for now.
If you are indeed asked to go visit a very important person, what are the first things you would do?
Yep, that’s right, you would google them and read up anything and everything about them. That’s prepares you for doing a bit of hot reading.
Fake psychics have two methods. One is called “cold reading”, and the other is “hot reading”. Cold reading is basically tossing out statements that have a very high probability of being right. Barnham statements. For example, “You feel special and unique”, “You have a box of old unsorted photographs in your house.”, “You’re having problems with a friend or relative.”, etc…
There is a bit more to it than just that. You also prep your mark “I often see images that are a bit unclear”. You also leverage the body language, fashion, age, and other attributes as well to get a feel for what will be a hit with them.
The next level up is called “Hot reading”. This is where you have previously researched your mark. Checked out their Facebook page, their Twitter postings, and anything else they may have written. This then puts you in the position of being able to reveal things that simply astonish the mark when you reveal “insights”.
Remember, Hank did also say this when he gave his supposed word … “there are six things that you have been thinking about, writing about, …”. Yea, “writing about”. All hank needed to do was to read that to get his “revelation”.
As for telling him what was on his desk. Photographs of Presidents sitting at a desk are almost mandatory. You would be hard-pressed to find any president of any nation not pictured sitting at a desk. All Hank needs to do is check such pictures.
So yes, if it had happened, then it would indeed have been hot reading 101.
Did it actually happen as he claimed?
This is Hank. Being honest is really not his thing. Given his past track record and current position of vigorously promoting the big lie, my default position is to assume he is lying.
Am I biased?
Damn right I am, but with good reason. Past experience is a strong indicator of future behavior, so when faced with silly stories like this then my answer is this – I’ll take “stuff that never happened” for 1000, Alex.
As for his theology, an “Anointing coming out of him”, is a rather non-traditional claim.
Let’s also not forget that Hank is rather well-known for being wrong. He rather famously predicted a Trump win in 2020.
He gets rather pissed when people point out that very public failure, and so to maintain face he doubles down on the big lie and insists that Trump did win and that anybody denying this is denying God.
The truly frightening Part
It is literally laughably daft stuff – religious porn.
Seriously now, who but an actor wears cuffs like that. You need them so that those sitting at the back can clearly see arm movements.
Despite the rather strong Jesse Gemstone vibe, many lap all this up as “truth”. Now that is truly frightening.