Akin Bad: GOP’s ‘Legitimate Rape’ Poster Boy Gives Long Rapey Interview

As the GOP continues to fail miserably at reaching out to women (or anyone else who is not an old white man), Todd Akin continues to helpfully make the rounds talking about “legitimate rape,” as he did in an interview with Chuck Todd Thursday morning. In case you missed it, then-Congressman Akin (R-MO), in 2012, told an interviewer that pregnancy resulting from rape is “really rare” because “If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.”

The clip touched off a firestorm of media attention, and quickly became shorthand for the Republican Party’s miserable failure at closing the electoral gender gap although it was followed by many, many, many similar comments by other Republicans, and a policy slate to match.

Now, Akin is all over the place promoting his new book, in which he apologizes for ever apologizing about those remarks. Thursday morning, he ran into an iceberg named Chuck Todd, who blocked Akin’s attempts to move off of the subject like Tim Howard on a coke bender.

First, Akin explained that “legitimate rape” is an “abbreviation” of the “law enforcement term ‘legitimate case of rape,'” and asked Todd “Do you know anybody that thinks rape is legitimate? That doesn’t even make sense.”

See, Akin either believes, or is trying to get people to believe, that his remarks were interpreted to mean that rape is a legitimate form of, I don’t quite know, expression, maybe?

A perplexed Todd asked Akin to elaborate, at which point…READ MORE

By: Tommy Christopher

Tommy Christopher is The Daily Banter's White House Correspondent and Political Analyst. He's been a political reporter and liberal commentator since 2007, and has covered the White House since the beginning of the Obama administration, first for PoliticsDaily, and then for Mediaite. Christopher is a frequent guest on a variety of television, radio, and online programs, and was the villain in the documentaries The Audacity of Democracy and Hating Breitbart. He's also That Guy Who Live-Tweeted His Own Heart Attack, and the only person to have ever received public apologies from both Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck.