Brian Schweitzer: Southern Men Like Eric Cantor ‘Have Effeminate Mannerisms’

Former Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer (D) doesn’t have much of a filter.

The potential presidential hopeful spoke with National Journal’s Marin Cogan for a wide-ranging profile published Tuesday and offered some pretty off-color opinions about politicians on both sides of the aisle.

When Cogan called him up on the night House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) was stunningly defeated in his primary, Schweitzer suggested Cantor set off his “gaydar.”

“Don’t hold this against me, but I’m going to blurt it out. How do I say this … men in the South, they are a little effeminate,” he told Cogan. When asked to clarify, he offered “They just have effeminate mannerisms. If you were just a regular person, you turned on the TV, and you saw Eric Cantor talking, I would say—and I’m fine with gay people, that’s all right—but my gaydar is 60-70 percent. But he’s not, I think, so I don’t know.”

He held nothing back in discussing Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), either. Feinstein recently accused the CIA of spying on congressional staffers who were compiling a report on the agency’s torture program.

“She was the woman who was standing under the streetlight with her dress pulled all the way up over her knees, and now she says, ‘I’m a nun,’ when it comes to this spying!” he told Cogan. “I mean, maybe that’s the wrong metaphor—but she was all in!”

That kind of trash-talk has been par for the course for Schweitzer ever since he expressed interest in a 2016 presidential bid. He’s slammed President Barack Obama’s record on health care and civil liberties and suggested that Hillary Clinton could take a “hard right” turn as a presidential candidate.