A far-right US congressional candidate in Texas set fire to a copy of the Quran, in an advertisement posted to X on Tuesday in which she vowed to “stop Islam once and for all.”
“Your daughters will be raped, and your sons beheaded, unless we stop Islam once and for all,” says the pro-Trump influencer, Valentina Gomez, in the ad. She is dressed in camo pants and a campaign T-shirt bearing the silhouette of a rifle.
Then, she uses a flamethrower to burn a copy of Islam’s holy book.
“We’re done turning the other cheek,” Gomez says, inverting one of Jesus’s parables. “Remember, David didn’t pray for Goliath — he killed them (sic). America is a Christian nation.”
“Those terrorist Muslims can fuck off to any of the 57 Muslim nations. There is only one true god, and that is the God of Israel,” she declares, as a song by Kanye West — self-proclaimed “Nazi” rapper — plays in the background.
The campaign spot ends with a campaign logo in which the ‘i” in “Valentina” is shown as a bullet, above the slogan: “Powered by Jesus Christ.”
Gomez, 26, hails from Colombia and immigrated to the US as a child with her family. In a tweet earlier this week, she described herself as armed, unvaccinated, “without pronouns,” and “100% America first.”
An avid supporter of US President Donald Trump, Gomez is challenging fellow Republican Rep. John Carter to represent Texas’s 31st Congressional District in the US House of Representatives.
Her Quran-burning ad was denounced on Tuesday by the Anti-Defamation League.
“This campaign ad from GOP candidate Valentina Gomez is fueled by hate and anti-Muslim bigotry. Burning a sacred religious text like the Quran can incite violence and put people in danger. This needs to be condemned by all good people of conscience,” the antisemitism watchdog said in a statement.
Close Trump confidante Laura Loomer praised the ad, calling it “the type of energy I want to see all GOP members of Congress have.”
The US Constitution’s First Amendment protects inflammatory speech, including burning religious texts or other items of symbolic meaning.
On Monday, US President Trump ordered the US attorney general to prosecute, “to the fullest extent possible,” any acts of “American Flag desecration,” though his executive order noted that flag-burning itself is protected.
Several far-right figures in Europe have made a practice of burning copies of the Quran, which — like drawing cartoons of the prophet Muhammed — frequently draws threats and acts of violence in response. In 2015, a failed terrorist attack by Islamic State-inspired gunmen targeted a “Draw Muhammad” contest, also in Texas.
The Quran-burning stunt is not Gomez’s first incendiary advertisement.
In 2024, she sought the Republican nomination to be Missouri’s secretary of state, finishing in sixth place.
In that campaign, she released an ad in which she used a flamethrower to destroy books aimed at LGBTQ teens, declaring: “These books come from a Missouri public library; when I’m in office they will burn.” She has also called transgender people “faggots.”
Last December, Gomez posted a video pretending to execute an illegal immigrant, calling for “public executions for any illegal that rapes or kills an American,” and adding: “They don’t deserve deportation; they deserve to be ended.”
She has pledged to “never take a dollar from AIPAC,” but said in a recent interview that she supports Israel because it is fighting Muslims.
In the same interview, Gomez praised the anti-Islam policies of China, which has detained more than a million of its Uighur minority citizens in “re-education” camps and subjected them to forced labor and sterilization, according to a report by Trump’s first administration, which accused Beijing of genocide.
Gomez also said, in a tweet directed at Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar, that Muslims should be “abolished.”