Milton Wolf, the Senate candidate criticized Sunday for once posting graphic x-ray images of injuries on Facebook and then poking fun at them, said that he joked about the images as a way to cope with tragedy he sees as a doctor.
“We all try to get through difficult things. I suppose humor in of itself is just that. If you stop and think about it, every single joke that exists, or everything you’ve ever laughed about is at somebody else’s expense. It’s at someone else’s pain,” he told Breitbart News in an interview published Monday. “And I think we use humor to try to deal with difficult situations.”
Wolf, a radiologist who launched a primary challenge to longtime Sen. Pat Roberts (R-KS), explained the difficult situations he has encountered.
“Day after day, year after year, you deal with the absolute worst tragedies you can imagine,” he told Breitbart. “I have had to deliver to people, to families, to moms the worst news they will ever hear in their life. That’s difficult and it takes its toll. I’m a human like everyone else.”
Though he defended his use of humor, Wolf also recognized that he was in the wrong and offered an apology in a Sunday statement and again to Breitbart News.
“I won’t make excuses or try to blame anyone else for my mistakes. I’ll own them. And I’ll apologize for them, like I have done here,” he said.
On Sunday, Wolf blamed the story about the images to his opponent, Roberts.
“It’s sad. Pat Roberts has not been able to identify a single issue on which he thinks I am wrong and so he’s doing things the Washington way: character assassination,” he said in a statement.
And on Monday, he linked the story to the Roberts campaign again.
“The Roberts campaign threatened me with this information before I announced,” he said.
A source close to Wolf told Breitbart that the Facebook posts were only “hinted at,” but added that people close to Roberts told Wolf they would “make sure that none of my friends would ever claim me as a friend again.”
Wolf also claimed he was being targeted by the National Republican Senatorial Committee.
“I’m a conservative, not a RINO like they prefer,” he said.
