Former Republican Rep. Todd Akin of Missouri, has been trying to explain and defend the "legitimate rape" comment he made while running for Senate in 2012, and Republican strategist Kurt Bardella says that he "sounds downright delusional."
"To suggest that everything Todd Akin has ever said was right is absolutely absurd," Bardella told Ed Berliner on "MidPoint" on
Newsmax TV on Thursday.
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In 2012, in an interview with Charles Jaco on the local Fox affiliate in St. Louis when asked if he believed abortion was okay in the case of rape, Akin said that it was "very rare" for a woman to become pregnant as the result of rape.
"If it's a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down," he said.
The comment was condemned by Democrats and Republicans, including presidential candidate Mitt Romney. Romney joined several Republican lawmakers, party leaders and conservative commentators who called on Akin to bow out of his race against Sen. Claire McCaskill, who he had been leading in the polls up until the point. Akin ultimately lost the election.
Akin has been making the rounds, promoting his book,
"Firing Back: Taking on the Party Bosses and Media Elite to Protect Our Faith and Freedom," which was just released Tuesday.
Akin told
"The Steve Malzberg Show" on Newsmax TV on Tuesday that the GOP abandoned him because "they were afraid of a media that could target and assassinate somebody by misinterpreting what they'd said."
However, the president of Endeavor Strategic Communications says that was not the case.
"The reason why no one in the Republican Party wants anything to do with Todd Akin is because he said a point-blank stupid comment that is completely indefensible," Bardwella said.
"And for him to try to reinvent himself and recreate history and rewrite history is downright laughable and has nothing to do with media assassination or liberal media bias or mainstream media targeting conservatives or anything like that," he added.
"Todd Akin said something that was point blank dumb, ignorant, offensive, and there's no place for him in the current debate or the Republican Party."
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