Ukip leader Gerard Batten flounced out of a TV interview after being questioned about one of his candidates' comments about rape.
It came after he defended Carl Benjamin, a Ukip candidate, who tweeted "I wouldn't even rape you" to Labour MP Jess Phillips.
On Sunday, Batten dismissed the tweet as "satire".
But he was challenged on the comments during an interview with Sky News ahead of his party's EU Elections campaign launch in London.
Asked about the comments, Batten said: "Go an ask Carl Benjamin. This is a three-year-old tweet that he did in the context of some Twitter trolling that people were doing."
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Pressed on why he would defend such comments, he said: "He has made an ill-considered remark. And if you are going to stop people taking part in public life or anything else because of some stupid, ill-considered remark, of several years before then I don't think you'd have anyone left in Parliament or anywhere else in public life, because we all do things we regret."
He described Benjamin as a "valuable candidate" who can get the party access to social media.
Asked about concern from voters about the comments, Batten appeared to lose his temper, saying: "How many times are you going to ask me the same question?"
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A second time, he asked: "How many times are you going to ask me the same question?"
He then said "Thankyou very much", and left the interview.
At the launch, Batten, whose party has been reduced to a rump in the European Parliament after defections to Mr Farage's new Brexit Party, insisted Ukip has a future.
But Farage said his former party had been "destroyed" by a "lurch towards extremism".
At the launch of Ukip's European election campaign, Batten said the May 23 contest would "inevitably be a re-run" of the 2016 Brexit referendum.
