North Carolina’s Republican lieutenant governor, Dan Forest, hit back at critics of his state’s new radical anti-LGBT law in a radio interview yesterday, saying that the state has been hit by “a pretty amazing smear campaign” when all legislators were trying to do was “protect women and children from predators and sexual offenders and so forth going into bathrooms freely.”

Forest responded earlier this month to PayPal’s decision to cancel a planned expansion in North Carolina in response to the law, which among other things blocks transgender people from using the public restroom of their identifying gender, by saying that if the law protects “the life of just one child or one woman from being molested or assaulted, then it was worth it.”

He continued that theme in an interview yesterday with Relevant Radio host Drew Mariani, saying that North Carolina has been the victim of “a pretty amazing smear campaign” that’s “all based on a bunch of lies.”

The whole thing, he said, was the fault of LGBT rights activists and the Charlotte City Council, whose nondiscrimination ordinance was overturned by the state law.

“They knew that the General Assembly in North Carolina was going to have to do something about it,” he said, “they were going to have to fight it constitutionally, but more importantly they were going to have to protect women and children from predators and sexual offenders and so forth going into bathrooms freely.”

Of course, there have been zero cases of child predators using LGBT nondiscrimination laws to assault children.