The viral video focuses heavily on questions surrounding Mitt Romney’s religion. Radio host defends Mormon video

The radio host who grilled Mitt Romney about his Mormon faith in a 2007 interview is expressing dismay that a clip of that conversation has gone viral as Election Day arrives and says whoever put it out was trying to make the GOP nominee “look weird.”

“I’d say, No. One, it wasn’t a gotcha interview,” Jan Mickelson, the host of a conservative-leaning radio talk show based in Des Moines, Iowa, told POLITICO. “It wasn’t designed as an ambush for Romney.”


The clip in question, which resurfaced last week and has been viewed more than 2 million times on YouTube, “left out the context,” Mickelson said.

The video making the rounds shows Mickelson and Romney sparring over the GOP presidential nominee’s Mormon faith in the lead-up to the 2008 primary contests. That piece of the interview, which was conducted after the two were already off the air, continued the on-air interview’s broader conversation about how Romney’s position on the abortion question had evolved since his time as governor of Massachusetts, he said.

“It wasn’t about his theology,” Mickelson said. “It was about the transition of his ethics, and why did he change his view, under what circumstances. I thought I was asking totally coherent questions that I thought were softballs.”

But the viral video focuses heavily on questions surrounding Romney’s religion, as the two delved into religious texts and discussed the Mormon Church’s positions on subjects including the second coming of Christ and abortion.

“I’m not running to talk about Mormonism,” Romney snapped toward the end of the clip.

Mickelson speculated that whoever is behind the YouTube clip — the user’s identity is unclear — likely wanted to highlight elements of Romney’s Mormon faith because “it makes him look weird.”

Viewers of the clip “should go back and see the entire interview,” he said. “What was lifted was just obscure Mormon theology that … I don’t think anyone even gives a rip about, although I’m thinking that’s why they pushed this interview forward, because it makes him look weird.”

The full interview doesn’t appear to be readily available.

Mickelson, who said “during the last election cycle, my main squeeze was Ron Paul,” declined to say whether he would vote for Romney Tuesday. But he has come to see Romney’s side of another point of contention related to the video, he said.

Romney told Katie Couric soon after that a conversation he had with a “TV or radio talk show host the other day in Iowa” was captured on a “hidden camera,” according to a transcript from CBS. Mickelson said that cameras are routinely in his studio to generate accompanying webcasts for his show, but added that while he was initially “really offended,” he now gives Romney the “benefit of the doubt” on the question of whether he knew the cameras were there and turned on. Mickelson said the candidate arrived late for the interview and wasn’t introduced to staffers, including a cameraman.

“Given the fact that he’s running in and out of there, I didn’t get a chance to introduce him to anyone, it’s possible he just didn’t notice,” Mickelson said. “I’m going to give him the benefit of the doubt, but [the cameras] were clearly visible, the cameraman was standing there.”