Delaware Republican Christine O'Donnell, who made an unsuccessful bid for U.S. Senate last year, walks out during an interview that airs on CNN's "Piers Morgan Tonight" on Wednesday after being asked to weigh in on the issues of witchcraft and gay marriage.
Video of the segment released by CNN shows the exchange that went down on the latter subject.
During the 2010 election season, video surfaced of O'Donnell indicating she's "dabbled into witchcraft." In the clip from years earlier she said, "I hung around people who were doing these things. I'm not making this stuff up. I know what they told me they do." The Tea Party favorite explained, "One of my first dates with a witch was on a satanic altar and I didn't know it. I mean, there was a little blood there and stuff like that. ... We went to a movie and then had a little picnic on a satanic altar."
HuffPost's Sam Stein reported at the time the remarks came to light:
O'Donnell immediately distanced herself from the quote, asking whether it was fair to hold candidates responsible for the "questionable folks" they hung out with in high school. The clarification may have been the only sane political move for O'Donnell to make. But it had the side effect of angering an already politically sensitive pagan community.
"Yes, this was 11 years ago she said that," said Reverend Selena Fox, the High Priestess & Senior Minister of the Circle Sanctuary a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting paganism and nature spirituality. "But the kinds of things she is saying now, saying 'well in high school you are with despicable characters' or some such thing, she is actually defaming Wiccans. Whether she intends to do that or not as a way to try and get herself out of this political problem she has created for herself, the fact is America really needs to be a place where you can celebrate diversity and practice your religion without getting ridiculed or defamed."
During her campaign, O'Donnell made headlines with a political ad in which she states, "I'm not a witch." Earlier this week, she said she never liked the spot and called its release her own "mistake."
When asked about her views on gay marriage in Wednesday's interview O'Donnell tells Morgan, "You're borderline being a little bit rude."
“I’m not talking about policies. I’m not running for office," she says on the program. “Ask Michele Bachmann what she thinks. Ask the candidates running for office what they think."
O'Donnell is out with a new book titled Troublemaker: Let's Do What It Takes to Make America Great Again. The former candidate signaled that she only wanted to discuss the contents of her work on CNN. HuffPost's Amanda Terkel reported earlier this week that in the introduction O'Donnell describes the book as "a political memoir slash campaign diary slash position paper slash rallying cry, with an emphasis on the slash."
This story has been updated with the cached information from the pages mentioned above.
