Trump-Loving Extremist Gets Backing From Trump Team
A former Republican U.S. Congressman who has a long record of anti-LGBTQ comments and positions is running to unseat a Democratic U.S. Senator. Jason Lewis, who has claimed same-sex parents may harm children announced he is running against Minnesota Democratic Senator Tina Smith.
Lewis, a conservative talk radio host for 25 years has lost two of his three congressional campaigns, but served for one term in the U.S. House of Representatives. In 2016 he won his House seat, only to be defeated in 2018 by Angie Craig, a lesbian and the Democrat who was his opponent in the 2016 race.
Politico calls Lewis Trump’s “Minnesota mini-me,” based on his love of President Donald Trump, and reports “two of Trump’s top political lieutenants” are guiding him.
But Lewis’ viability will be a test of just how much Minnesota voters will support a bigoted and extremist candidate who literally supports the right of people to own slaves.
“In fact, if you really want to be quite frank about it, how does somebody else owning a slave affect me? It doesn’t,” Lewis said in an update to his book on states’ rights, “If I don’t think it is right, I won’t own one, and people always say ‘well if you don’t want to marry somebody of the same sex, you don’t have to, but why tell somebody else they can’t.’ Uh, you know if you don’t want to own a slave, don’t. But don’t tell other people they can’t.”
That’s far from his only incendiary and offensive position.
On his radio show he has attacked women as, basically, stupid:
“You’ve got a vast majority of young single women who couldn’t explain to you what GDP means. You know what they care about? They care about abortion. They care about abortion and gay marriage. They care about ‘The View.’ They are non-thinking,” he said.
And he has lamented that “you can’t call” a woman “a slut” anymore.
Lewis’ bigoted and extremist positions do not end there.
Buzzfeed reported in 2018 that Lewis has “promoted extreme opinions about gays and lesbians on his radio show, comparing them to rapists, criminals, and polygamists. He contended that gay rights activists were ‘shredding the Constitution,’ and that same-sex parents ‘could harm the kid.'”
He says laws against rape are unfair because “you’re not treating a rapist equal.” H has also used a false interpretation of the 14th Amendment to make a very invalid case against same-sex marriage:
“So if the law says that we’re not going to allow three people to marry, then you’ve got to treat everybody the same way,” Lewis added. “No three people can marry. Same is true for gay marriage. It’s not discrimination. It’s not unconstitutional. The law discriminates all the time. It discriminates against behavior.”