Acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao called Monterey a ‘really dark place’ with ‘a lot of witchcraft’
By Ricardo Tovar
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PACIFIC GROVE, California (KSBW) — The Navy secretary resigned yesterday, marking another leadership change at the Pentagon since the war began.
Undersecretary Hung Cao, a Navy combat veteran and Republican Senate candidate, is now serving as the acting secretary of the Navy.
He previously made comments back in 2023 about the Monterey area and Lovers Point, saying that it was full of “a lot of witchcraft.”
He made these comments during a run for senator in Virginia back in 2023 during an interview with Sean Feucht, a former Bethel Church worship leader.
“There’s a place in Monterey, California, called Lovers Point. The original name was Lovers of Christ Point. But now it’s become—they took out the Christ—it’s Lovers Point. Monterey is a really dark place now, a lot of witchcraft. The Wiccan community has really taken over there,” Cao said.
He added, “We can’t let that happen in Virginia.”
To fact-check these claims, for starters, Lovers Point is in Pacific Grove, not Monterey.
According to the Monterey County Historical Society, Pacific Grove was founded in 1875 as a Methodist “Christian Seaside Resort.” It began as a summer retreat with strict religious rules, and over time, grew into a quiet coastal town.
The area once called “Lovers of Jesus Point,” not “Christ Point, was later renamed Lover’s Point.
Cao’s comments also conflate Wicca, a modern pagan religion, with witchcraft, a broader term for magical or spiritual practices. The two are related but not interchangeable.
According to The Pluralism Project at Harvard University, Wicca began in the U.K. in the 1940s and has grown significantly in the United States since arriving in the 1960s.
Today, an estimated 1.5 million Americans identify as witches, including about 800,000 who specifically follow Wicca.
With the United States population being an estimated 340 million people, that would make the number of self-identified witches about 0.44% of the population. It is unclear how much of the witch population is in Monterey specifically, as there was no public record available.
CNN reported that three sources said the former Navy secretary was reportedly given the option to either resign or be fired.
The former secretary, a businessman with no prior military service, helped fund millions of dollars for President Trump’s campaign.
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