Asked to share the supposed binders in which he had these images, LePage refused. (The ACLU has filed a public-records request for them.) Other than the alleged binders, there is, as I noted in January, no public evidence to support LePage’s claim that the heroic epidemic is being fed by men of color from Connecticut and New York. Victims of the heroin epidemic in Maine are, like the state’s overall population, overwhelmingly white. Historically, heroin in Maine has come not from minorities from those states, but via Caucasian dealers from Massachusetts. When asked to back up his statements, LePage has refused or (literally) stomped away in anger.

The next day, Drew Gattine, a Democratic state legislator, criticized LePage and said his comments did nothing to help fight heroin. LePage responded by leaving Gattine a voicemail saying he was not a racist, calling Gattine a “socialist cocksucker” and “son of a bitch,” and daring the Democrat to release the voicemail, which Gattine did. Elsewhere, he said he wished that dueling was legal so that he could challenge Gattine and “point it right between his eyes.”

It’s that message that has proved to be LePage’s big problem. On Friday, he initially offered a non-apology, saying, “Legislators like Gattine would rather be politically correct and protect ruthless drug dealers than work with me to stop this crisis that is killing five Mainers a week.” That evening, he backed up his opposition to “political correctness” with more inflammatory comments.

“Look, the bad guy is the bad guy, I don’t care what color he is,” LePage said. “When you go to war, if you know the enemy and the enemy dresses in red and you dress in blue, then you shoot at red…. You shoot at the enemy. You try to identify the enemy and the enemy right now, the overwhelming majority of people coming in, are people of color or people of Hispanic origin.”

The problem with LePage’s comments is not that they are politically incorrect. It is that based on the available evidence, they are factually incorrect. LePage is pointing his finger at blacks and Hispanics, but he refuses to offer any proof to back it up.

The irony is that LePage is horrified by the idea of being called a racist. Like many people confronted with their own racist comments, he views the idea of being called a racist as at least as bad as, and perhaps worse than, actually committing racism.

When questioned at the town hall on Wednesday, LePage said, “Nobody wants to give you the real story, but the fact of the matter is, sir, I am not a racist.” (As the man who had asked him the question noted, “I didn’t call you a racist.”) LePage also blamed his fury at being called a racist for his voicemail to Gattine. Gattine, too, said he had not called LePage a racist.

LePage floated the remarkable notion that calling out racism is equivalent to using racist and sexist slurs during his radio interview Tuesday, saying that being called racist is “like calling a black man the ‘N’ word or a woman the ‘C’ word. It just absolutely knocked me off my feet.”