It seems that Rev. Franklin  Graham has been feeding at Sue Myrick’s paranoia trough. The tough-talkin’ Christian preacher, who in the past has called Islam an “evil and wicked religion,” upped the ante in an interview with far-right website Newsmax.com last week. Graham told the website that the Muslim Brotherhood and Pres. Obama are working hand in hand to make the world a scary place for Christians. Franklin claimed the Muslim Brotherhood has infiltrated “every level of our government” and has a big influence on Obama administration decisions. Graham didn’t, or couldn’t, name a single Muslim Brotherhood member in Obama’s circle, of course, which made this writer think of Sen. Joe McCarthy’s infamous “I have here a list of names” speech during the early 1950s’ Red Scare.

Graham has become as much a right-wing spokesman as a preacher in the past few years, unlike his father who, although relatively conservative politically, was at least subtle about it. Not Frankie, though.

"We certainly love the Muslim people," Graham said in another, earlier interview with Newsmax.com. "But that is not the faith of this country. And that is not the religion that built this nation. The people of the Christian faith and the Jewish faith are the ones who built America, and it is not Islam." An interesting claim, and one that African slaves who brought their various beliefs to America would find, at best, kind of funny. As would the Chinese Confucians and Buddhists who built the transcontinental railroads; not to mention the voodoo-practicing Creoles of Louisiana, American Indians’ various nature-centered beliefs, and the untold numbers of agnostics, atheists and “don’t cares” who also helped “build America.”

As for the dreaded extremist, knife-between-their-teeth Muslim Brotherhood of which the right, including Graham, is so terrified, here’s what we wrote last month:

The Muslim Brotherhood, say folks on the right, is a violent, extremist sect that started al-Qaeda and is now out to enslave the world. For a more fair and balanced (to coin a phrase), sane look at what the Muslim Brotherhood is today, as well as its history, link here to a New York Times report. The short version: The Muslim Brotherhood was, indeed, once a violent Islamist group, and al-Qaeda’s second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahri, started out in the MB. He quit the MB because they he saw them as wussy cowards who couldn’t build a decent bomb if their lives depended on it (or something like that). These days, al-Qaeda hates and condemns the MB for having renounced violence and participating in Egyptian elections. After decades of being harassed, squelched and tortured by Egyptian authorities, the MB is so browbeaten and weak, it didn’t even have the nerve to support the Cairo street protests at first, for fear of being accused of starting the whole thing. But those are the big, bad Muslim terrorists that Sue Myrick [and Franklin Graham] want you to be checking for under your bed every night.

• Rev. Franklin Graham: "Hey, I smell a Muslim"