During a conversation with North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory (R) Thursday night, Fox News host Megyn Kelly pressed him on the merits of his state’s controversial new anti-LGBT law.
Kelly drilled McCrory on her show “The Kelly File” about the backlash the bill’s received. She began the interview asking what prompted him to push for the legislation in the first place.
“I want to ask you about bathrooms because I’ve been in women’s bathrooms my whole life,” Kelly said. “We don’t have the urinal situation. We’ve got like the stalls. And we get to go in, we do our business and like we don’t—it’s not—we don’t see each other. So why are you concerned about young girls exposing themselves or seeing somebody else exposed in a woman’s bathroom?”
“Well, first of all, I can’t believe we’re talking about this,” McCrory replied. “This is not an issue that I started. This is an issue that the left started, not the right. It’s not just women’s bathrooms.”
Kelly went on to question McCrory about a talking point many conservatives have used: the fear of men using a women’s restroom in order to prey on women and girls.
“Typically, male molesters are heterosexual and if they want to sneak into a bathroom they’ll do it,” Kelly said. “But 90 percent of the cases of molestation happens with someone you know. So what is the fear about the transgender situation and the bathrooms?”
McCrory, who was quick to shift the blame throughout the interview, stood by his argument that it wasn’t fear that prompted the legislation—it’s “common sense.”
“Mine is not a fear,” he said. “I’m not doing it—I don’t like the rhetoric that’s often used on the right saying what the fear is. It’s a basic expectation of privacy that I hear from mom and dad and families that when their daughter or son goes into a facility, a restroom, they expect people of that gender, of that biological sex or gender, to be the only other ones in that room.”
Watch below:
