Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear sparked an outcry on Tuesday when he appeared to suggest GOP vice presidential candidate Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, should experience a rape-induced pregnancy.
Beshear expressed outrage to "Morning Joe" co-host Mika Brzezinski over Vance supposedly calling pregnancy from rape an "inconvenience," repeating a Democratic attack that was fact-checked as out of context when it was leveled by Democratic Rep. Tim Ryan during his Senate race against Vance in 2022.
"Make him go through this," the governor stated.
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Beshear made the comments while laying out the Trump and Harris campaign’s positions on abortion and "reproductive freedom." He told the anchor that "empowering people to make their own decisions" was "front and center" at the Democratic National Convention on Monday night.
Beshear targeted what he called "extreme" abortion laws that have been enacted in various red states following the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision that overturned Roe V. Wade in 2022, and slammed the GOP's attacks that Democratic lawmakers support abortion through all nine months of pregnancy.
"It’s just fear tactics and it’s just lying to people," he told the anchor. He then targeted Vance specifically.
"I mean, think about what some people have had to go through because of these laws. I mean, JD Vance calls pregnancy resulting from rape inconvenient. Inconvenience is traffic," he said. "I mean, make him go through this."
He continued, "Someone being violated, someone being harmed, and then telling them that they don’t have options after that. That fails any test of decency, of humanity."
Continuing to ding former President Trump and Vance, he added, "It also shows they don’t have any empathy at all. And a president, and a vice president, has to have empathy. You gotta be able to put yourself in a position that you’ve never been in to try to understand somebody else."
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Vance blasted Beshear’s words on X, stating, "What the hell is this? Why is @AndyBeshearKY wishing that a member of my family would get raped?!? What a disgusting person."
William Martin, communications director for Vance, said in a statement, "After speaking on the DNC main stage last night, Harris campaign surrogate Governor Andy Beshear went on national television this morning and explicitly called for a member of Senator Vance’s family to be raped. His comments are disgusting, vile, and should not be tolerated in American politics. We call on Kamala Harris to immediately repudiate Governor Beshear’s comments and demonstrate that regardless of partisan disagreements, this kind of violent rhetoric has no place in our public discourse."
Other conservatives called out the governor’s choice of words.
Commentator Paul Szypula posted, "Beshear needs to apologize immediately."
"Trump War Room" account rapid response director Jake Schneider wrote that "these people are sick."
The Daily Signal senior reporter Mary Margaret Olohan replied to the clip of Beshear, stating, "This is actually a very common, very hateful leftist sentiment that I’ve heard repeatedly in different contexts. The first time was when an anti-Kavanaugh protester told me in 2018 she hoped my daughter would be raped someday."
Later on MSNBC Tuesday, asked to respond to criticism of his comments, Beshear said he'd never wish harm on anyone and said any outrage about what he'd said was "deflection."
