Mainly due to his political views.

I am just curious, what exactly were these political views? And why do you think they are legitimate and not demagoguery?

The reason I am asking is that while living in the US, the impression I got is that most polemicists were demagogues. It was a method to get money, grifting so to speak.

This was a while ago, but I vividly remember several nominally anti-abortion politicians getting caught getting their mistresses pregnant and then pressuring the mistresses to get an abortion.