Republican activist Dave Daubenmire, also known as 'Coach Dave'

A pro-Trump preacher has said that Democratic candidate Pete Buttigieg should be jailed for speaking to a nine-year-old.

Dave Daubenmire, more commonly known as right-wing internet persona ‘Coach Dave’, hit out after a nine-year-old boy asked Buttigieg about being gay at an event in Denver, Colorado.

Buttigieg had praised the “brave” boy, saying: “It won’t always be easy, but that’s OK, because you know who you are. And that’s really important because when you know who you are, you have a centre of gravity that can hold you together when all kinds of chaos is happening around you.”

Pete Buttigieg ‘should be in jail’, says Republican preacher

Responding to the incident on his internet radio show, the Republican-affiliated preacher said: “Pete Buttfudge, this was a staged thing, a nine-year-old boy comes up to Buttplug and says ‘oh, I think I like boys, how do you come out?’

“The media says, ‘oh my goodness, what a brave young man!’

“Fifty years ago, they would have thrown Buttfudge in jail for even bringing it up and talking about it in front of a young kid. Everybody clapped for this little boy… we’re so messed up.”

Enraged, he shouted: “What ever happened to shame? Why didn’t his mommy put him in a headlock and drag him off the court? Where’s his daddy?”

A guest on the live stream then suggested that the boy was “probably molested by mum or dad or some relative… homosexuality, sick as it is, where does this thought come from? Chances are, he was molested.”

Daubenmire concurred: “Contributing to the delinquency of a minor, a Presidential candidate, contributing to the delinquency of a minor.”

Preacher says we ‘need to make homosexuality unthinkable again’

The extremist preacher delivered a keynote speech to a Republican event in Ohio last year.

Local GOP leaders snapped smiling selfies with Daubenmire, who has previously compared gay sex to child murder and claimed that playing sports turns women into lesbians.

He vowed: “We need to make homosexuality unthinkable again. It needs to go back in the closet.”