Last month, Indiana's far-right Christian nationalist Lt. Gov. Micah Beckwith appeared on the "FlashPoint" program where he declared that he was giving the residents of his state "permission to hate" the religion of Islam.
"I hate Islam, Beckwith proclaimed. "It's a demonic death cult."
Beckwith's comments understandably caused outrage and generated controversy, but he has steadfastly defended his statement and repeatedly doubled down on it. And it is easy to understand why: He thinks that hating Islam is a "political winner" for Republicans.
On Monday, Beckwith appeared on "The Todd Huff Show" to discuss the ongoing controversy, which he declared to be "fantastic."
"For every negative hostile comment I get or message I get—either social media, or emails to the office, or text messages, or whatnot—I'm getting I would say four to five that are positive," Beckwtih said. "I was speaking last night up in Grand Rapids, Michigan, at a big education conference. There were a few thousand people from all over the world, and I got bombarded after I came down off the stage with people coming up to me. I was probably talking for another hour after this whole thing got over with people just coming up saying, 'Hey, thank you. We saw what you did. We see the stand you're taking. We're with you. We support you. Don't back down.'"
"I didn't say this whole thing on Islam for political reasons, but I will tell you right now, this is a political winner," he added. "If you're a conservative and you want to rally the base and the majority of people to support you in politics—if this was for political expediency—take a stand against Islam. This is just a winning issue for America. It's not because Americans hate Muslims; it's because we recognize the wicked ideology and a lot of people just don't know how to address it. So when they see somebody standing up saying, 'Hey, I'm going to call it out, I'm going to run at this thing head on,' it resonates with people."
"I've been very encouraged," Beckwith continued. "People have been texting me a lot over the last few days, going, 'Oh my gosh, we've been seeing all the negative media and we're so sorry and we hope you're doing okay.' I'm like, 'I'm doing great. I love it. I think this is fantastic.' This is exactly what I got elected to do, and I'm doing it and I'm not going to back down."
