Rep. Blake Farenthold (R-TX) issued an apology on Tuesday night after he hesitated to say he would drop his endorsement of Donald Trump if the Republican nominee told him he liked sexually assaulting women.
During an interview on MSNBC, Chris Hayes pressed Farenthold on what it would take for him to ditch Trump after the congressman defended Trump from the 2005 tape in which the real estate mogul could be heard boasting about grabbing women’s genitals.
“Until he does something so bad to make him worse than Hillary, I’m still in,” Farenthold told Hayes
So Hayes asked, “If someone off the record, in a locker room — this was not in a locker room, it was a workplace — said, ‘I really like raping women,’ would that be locker-room talk?”
“It depends, you don’t know the entire context of all this,” Farenthold replied.
“But you would be fine with that?” Hayes jumped in to ask.
“I’m not here to defend Donald Trump. I don’t like what he said,” Farenthold then responded.
Hayes asked Farenthold again, “If a tape came out with Donald Trump saying that, saying ‘I really like to rape women,’ you would continue to endorse him?”
“That would be bad. And I would have to consider — I’d to consider it,” the congressman answered. “But again, we’re talking about what Donald Trump said 10 years ago as opposed to what Hillary Clinton has done in the past two or three years.”
Farenhold later apologized for his answers in a series of tweets saying that he does not condone rape.
I apologize for my failure to immediately condemn anyone who would say something as outrageous as they like raping women. (1/3)
— Blake Farenthold (@farenthold) October 12, 2016
During an interview on MSNBC with Chris Hayes tonight, I was thrown off by the anchor’s use of a hypothetical question. (2/3)
— Blake Farenthold (@farenthold) October 12, 2016
I do not, and have not ever condoned rape or violence against women. That is not the kind of man I believe Donald Trump to be. (3/3)
— Blake Farenthold (@farenthold) October 12, 2016
Watch a clip of the interview via Slate:
