Former North Carolina Rep. Mark Walker (R), whom President Donald Trump recently appointed to a newly-created religious liberty role, said the administration is “relentless” in holding the rest of the world “accountable” for protecting human rights in an exclusive interview on Breitbart News Saturday.
While Trump tapped Walker to be the U.S. Ambassador at Large for International Religious Freedom at the State Department, the Senate refused to act on his nomination before it expired at the end of 2025.
The president responded by creating a new position, appointing Walker to be the Principal Advisor for Global Religious Freedom at the State Department — a role that does not require Senate confirmation — earlier in January.
Speaking with Breitbart News Washington Bureau Chief Matthew Boyle on Saturday, the former pastor and member of Congress said that the epicenter of violent attacks against Christians is in West Africa, specifically Nigeria.
“One that we’re seeing a lot in the continent of Africa, where 70 percent of all Christians that are murdered — are martyred — are martyred there in Africa. And 90 percent of that number really comes down to one country, Nigeria, which we saw President Trump courageously and most recently put them on what we call the CPC, or ‘Countries of Particular Concern’ list.”
Trump designated Nigeria as a ‘Country of Particular Concern’ in October after Rep. Riley Moore (R-WV) wrote a letter to Secretary of State Marco Rubio sounding the alarm on over 7,000 Christians who were killed in Nigeria in 2025 up until that point.
Many more Nigerian Christians were kidnapped, tortured, or displaced by Muslim terrorist groups like Boko Haram.
Moore had also cited reports stating that 19,100 churches had been destroyed in the country since 2009.
“My job is to gather that data from our team who we’ve been working diligently with, as far as where some of these atrocities are committed,” Walker explained to Boyle, calling the anti-Christian attacks “horrific.”
He continued, “But there’s also the other aspect of this, for countries who have blasphemy laws, for people that go there that want to talk about maybe their Catholic faith or whatever religion they’re tied to — a lot of times, these folks are rounded up, detained, and falsely imprisoned for five [or] up to 20 years sometimes, and so that’s what we’re studying, providing that information to Secretary Rubio and to President Trump, as they obviously do their work around the world.”
“Of course, I don’t believe we’ve had a stronger advocate than President Trump on religious liberty,” he added, mentioning he has also focused on the Druze minority ethno-religion in Syria as another example of persecuted peoples.
Emphasizing how much the administration is dedicated to religious freedom, Walker concluded to Boyle that “President Trump is relentless in holding accountable the rest of the world from a moral standpoint of doing what is right in all areas, but specifically for what we’re called to do.”
“What he’s asked me to do is to get out there and support him and talk about the things that are important to him when it comes to international religious liberty, the freedom that America has been such a leader [in], and I’m honored to do so,” he said. “I’m grateful that we have a president who is undaunted and unafraid and unashamed to call out the rest of the world when it comes to these kinds of atrocities.”
Olivia Rondeau is a politics reporter for Breitbart News based in Washington, DC. Find her on X/Twitter and Instagram.
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