U.S. House candidate Paul Nehlen, who is aiming to unseat House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., in a Republican primary next year, on Sunday took to Twitter to defend himself after he posted a controversial meme.

Nehlen on Saturday tweeted an illustration of three crosses, with one in the middle reading, “It’s okay to be white,” and the two on either side reading, “No it’s not.”

Nehlen caught flak from many critics. Ben Shapiro, syndicated columnist and editor-in-chief of The Daily Wire, tweeted, "Jesus was a Middle Eastern Jew." And Elliott Hamilton, writer at The Daily Wire, responded on Twitter, "(((Jesus))) wasn’t one of your kind." (The use of triple parentheses, called echoes, around names is an allusion to people persecuting Jews on Twitter. Jews have since taken to doing it themselves as a response to Anti-Semites.)

“Hmm. Jesus is my Savior,” Nehlen tweeted in return. “I'm filled with the Holy Ghost. I say you are wrong. Plus, who authorized you to use the echoes?”

Hmm.

Jesus is my Savior.

I'm filled with the Holy Ghost.

I say you are wrong.

Plus, who authorized you to use the echoes? pic.twitter.com/hJ3e8RMX7l — Paul Nehlen (@pnehlen) December 24, 2017

Nehlen ran against Ryan in 2016, and lost. He has in the past retweeted some white supremacist and anti-Semitic memes, but has not responded to whether he considers himself a white nationalist, according to the Huffington Post.