In December 1938, Christians told the press that "revolution" was bound to come to America, and that the American people were in the mood for it. He had timed it for the president's recent visit to Chattanooga before that was cancelled. He planned to cut the power (he had a patent for an electrical fuse), saying "lots of things can happen in the dark", after which his men would seize the town and fly the red flag from the court house, before taking the state capitol of Nashville and moving on California, Chicago, New York, and Washington. He explained that the plan did not go ahead because by the time the President did visit in November, conditions were less suitable for a revolution. Christians was investigated by U.S. Army military intelligence who described him as having "a brilliant mind but of erratic temperament", and as posing no threat. Raymond Moley described him as a "harmless lunatic". In 1934, Pat McGrady, author of "Fascism in America", visited Christians in Chattanooga for New York's "Jewish Daily Bulletin" and reported that he was mostly ignored there and "quite without honor", unable to get a letter printed in the city's newspapers despite his many attempts. Christians attributed this to a "campaign of silence" by the press but McGrady thought it was because Christians was a crank of the type found in every town and with whom newspaper editors were all too familiar. Nonetheless, he thought that Christians was not as much of a "nut" as some made out, saying:  He is a clever fellow with a fine appreciation of the limits of our broad liberties of speech and action which he strains in promoting his personality and an economic scheme which, if effective, is enough to surrender the rights and properties of the people into the hands of whoever may be strong enough to grasp control of a despairing nation. Despite his intelligence, McGrady identified in Christians a deep ignorance of the principles of Fascism and of its practice in Germany and Italy, fostered, he thought, by the narrow sources on which Christians was able to draw in Chattanooga in understanding World affairs. This made the question of whether Christians was really a Fascist, a moot one. In 1935, Jay Franklin of "Vanity Fair" cited Christians as an example of the inability of American radicals to capitalise on the weakness of an antiquated government due to their inability to lead, to follow, or to co-operate, opining of him that what could have been a mass movement was reduced to a one-man-show by his policy of double-crossing and the destruction of local movements in order to attract personal publicity.