Heated Romney defends his Mormon faith in 2007 video that goes viral

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"Romney has rarely, if ever, used such specific language during the 2012 campaign to discuss his faith," the Washington Post writes about a 2007 video that recently resurfaced on YouTube, in which Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney gets into a heated exchange with conservative Iowa radio host Jan Mickelson.

"You don't understand my faith like I do," Romney begins, visibly angered, when Mickelson presses him on reconciling his previous stance on abortion with his Mormon beliefs, and the church's position on where the apocalypse will take place.

"I don't like coming on the air and having you come after me and my church. ... I'm not running as a Mormon, and I get a little tired of coming on a show like yours and having it all about Mormonism," he says.

Though the video has always existed in various spaces online, it has garnered more than 1.7 million views since it was re-posted by an unidentified user on October 31.

As the Washington Post reports, Romney recalled the exchange in an interview with Katie Couric, when she asked him if ever lost his temper.

"I became intense in confronting what he had said," Romney said. "We went back and forth and unbeknownst to me he had a hidden camera. ... I was intense, I wasn't angry or out of control."