At a rally in support of Texas Republican Ted Cruz, Duck Dynasty patriarch Phil Robertson said that LGBT people who get married are ‘evil’ and ‘wicked’, and that Christians should ‘rid the earth of them’.

Don’t you understand that when a fellow like me looks at the landscape and sees the depravity, the perversion – redefining marriage and telling us that marriage is not between a man and a woman? Come on Iowa! It’s nonsense. It is evil. It’s wicked. It’s sinful. They want us to swallow it, you say. We have to run this bunch out of Washington, D.C. We have to rid the earth of them. Get them out of there. Ted Cruz loves God.

Ted Cruz, meanwhile, praised the notorious TV homophobe, saying, ‘What an extraordinary human being.’

‘God makes every one of us unique, but some are uniquer than others,’ he went on to say, before claiming that Robertson speaks ‘for the love of Jesus’:

‘What a voice Phil has to speak out for the love of Jesus,’ he said. ‘What a joyful, cheerful, unapologetic voice of truth Phil Robertson is.’

This isn’t the first time the presidential candidate has supported anti-LGBT speakers. Ted Cruz previously spoke at a conference in November organised by Pastor Kevin Swanson. Swanson made headlines for stating that Christians same sex married couples ‘should be put to death’ and saw Uganda’s ‘kill the gays’ bill as a model for this genocide. Cruz was criticised for supporting Swanson, but was also joined at the conference by fellow Republicans Mike Huckabee and Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal.

You can see Robertson’s comments below.