Anti-gay pundit says “electrical transmissions” from the vaccinated made him sick. Not COVID-19.

Anti-LGBTQ and anti-vaxxer pundit Dave Daubenmire has been ill for weeks, but he’s convinced it’s not COVID-19. Rather, he believes that it’s due to “some kind of electric transmission” from the vaccinated.

While his claim is ridiculous, it’s more concerning that many Americans may believe he’s onto something.

Related: Now the religious right is claiming the COVID vaccine will cause planes to fall out of the sky

“I know this. What I’ve had for the last three weeks – are you guys looking at me? – is not a virus,”  Daubenmire said in a recent broadcast. “I want you to listen to me again. Because we’ve all been programmed to say ‘COVID virus.’

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“What I had was not a virus,” he continued. “I got that from the Holy Spirit. What I have — had – I’ve been dealing with – is some kind of electric transmission – are you listening to me? – from the vaccinated.”

Daubenmire then said that he has been taking the anti-parasite drug Ivermectin and the malaria drug hydroxychloroquine — two medications that conservatives have promoted as COVID-19 treatments, even though both the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have said they’re ineffective against coronavirus.

He has also been taking zinc and vitamin C. He said “the cocktail of vitamins that I’ve been taking – blocked the physical aspect of [the discharges from vaccinated people] from getting deeply into my body, but it did not prevent the electrical part of it.”

The idea that vaccinated people can release dangerous electric discharges sounds bonkers, but it actually stems from a conspiracy theory that the COVID-19 vaccines secretly inject microchips into people’s bodies. The vaccines don’t contain microchips. Nevertheless, anti-vax conspiracy theorists have said that billionaire vaccine advocate Bill Gates put microchips into the vaccines to establish a technocratic new world order…. or something.

What’s troubling is that one in four American adults has said they don’t know whether the COVID-19 vaccine contains a microchip, according to a March Axios/Ipsos poll. That number represents roughly 69 million Americans. Furthermore, roughly 42 percent of Americans believe at least one COVID-19 conspiracy theory, according to a March survey commissioned by the data science nonprofit Surgo Ventures.

Naturally, Daubenmire has a long history of saying wildly untrue claims, mostly about LGBTQ people.

He has said that it’s inconceivable that Americans would vote for gay politicians because they’re not “sane.” He also said LGBTQ politicians have “immoral” and “unnatural” sex lives. He once referred to Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg as “Pete Buttplug” before wondering about his preferred sexual positions. He has said some women become lesbians because they’re too ugly for men to love.

In 2017, he blamed the flooding in Houston, Texas on the city’s lesbian mayor. He has also claimed that we’re seeing an “explosion of deviant sexual proclivities … because our DNA is being changed.”