President Donald Trump’s new acting Navy secretary, Hung Cao, warned in 2023 that “witchcraft” had “taken over” the city of Monterey in California.
Cao became the acting secretary of the Navy this week after the previous secretary, John Phelan, was removed from his position by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
After this news came out, old videos from an interview Cao did several years ago started to spread a lot on social media.
In 2023, while running for the Senate in Virginia – and losing to the current senator, Tim Kaine – Cao said that witches had “taken over” Monterey and that the name of a coastal area had been changed to remove a mention of Jesus Christ.
He told an interview with a former pastor from Bethel Church named Sean Feucht, “We can’t let it turn like this.
There’s a place in Monterey called Lovers Point. The original name was Lovers of Christ Point, but now it’s Lovers Point. They took out the Christ, and it’s really – Monterey is a very dark place now.” He also said there was a lot of witchcraft and the Wiccan community had taken over, and that they couldn’t let that happen in Virginia.
Business Insider reported at the time that even though there was some Wiccan presence in Monterey, there wasn’t much proof that the community had taken over the seaside town.
In the same 2023 interview, Cao also joked that he was “African American” because he spent part of his childhood in Niger.
Here is a video of new Acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao warning that a wave of Wiccan "witchcraft" is taking over American and threatening Christianity pic.twitter.com/uwpkf03ENm
— FactPost (@factpostnews) April 23, 2026
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