Donald Trump endorsed an anti-LGBTQ Christian extremist who believes that premarital sex leads people to pedophilia in the Republican primary for Michigan secretary of state, part of his attempt to install Republicans who believe the false idea that President Joe Biden stole the 2020 election in key roles to oversee future elections.
Kristina Karamo fits the bill when it comes to believing that Trump won the election and that it was stolen by nefarious forces who somehow eluded every state’s government. But her views on sexuality make her an odd choice for the thrice-married former president who bragged about having affairs and sexually assaulting women.
Related: Transgender man named Michigan Teacher of the Year
A part-time professor at Wayne County Community College and a devout Christian, Karamo, 36, first got involved in politics as a poll challenger in the 2020 elections. She claims she saw at least two ballots get miscounted while she observed absentee ballots getting processed, which got her an appearance on Fox News to help spread conspiracy theories about the election.
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She claimed on a local TV station that voting software in her state was stealing thousands of votes from Republicans and that the state’s election results should be overturned. When a Republican-led state senate investigation found “no evidence” of widespread fraud, Karamo just saw that as a reason to push for more ballot audits.
“She is strong on Crime, including the massive Crime of Election Fraud,” Trump said in a statement when endorsing her. “Good luck Kristina, and while you’re at it, check out the Fake Election results that took place in the city of Detroit.”
Over 78% of the population of Detroit is Black, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
Before getting involved in the election, Karamo spent years writing online and making a fringe podcast where she discussed how “the devil” is influencing American politics and education.
Their party has totally been taken over by a satanic agenda,” she said of Democrats on her podcast in 2020.
She later said that the Capitol rioters on January 6 were “completely Antifa posing as Trump supporters.”
In another podcast episode from this year, she called schools “government indoctrination camps” that teach “unbridled wickedness” to children.
“There is no such thing as a person with two mommies and two daddies,” she said in January. “That is just factually incorrect.”
“No, it’s the parent and their homosexual lover. That’s what’s going on,” she said last August.
In 2019, she wrote in a blog post that trans women are “mentally ill adults playing dress up. That is also part of the horrifically destructive sexual revolution.”
Karamo isn’t just opposed to LGBTQ people existing. She also believes that straight people who have premarital sex – which is pretty much all of them – are going down a path towards pedophilia.
“When we normalize people fornicating and we normalize people living together with their boyfriends and girlfriends and all that stuff, we open a door for us to get to the point where we have people want to normalize pedophilia,” she wrote.
Karamo described herself as an “anti-vaxxer” before the COVID-19 vaccines were approved for all Americans and said that evolution is “one of the biggest frauds that have been perpetrated on us.”
And she could win.
Karamo is one of three Republicans running in the primary for Michigan secretary of state, and she has raised more money than the two other competitors so far. Her competitors haven’t focused their campaigns on nonexistent voter fraud like she has.
The winner of the primary will face the incumbent, Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson (D), who has more funds in her war chest than Karamo has raised so far. But should Karamo win, she would be in charge of the department that oversees elections in the state.
