Watch: Asked About Bill Cosby, Obama Offers Definition Of Rape
President Barack Obama this afternoon was asked at a press conference about the allegations against Bill Cosby, and he offered a definition of rape after refusing to comment specifically.Â
President Barack Obama this afternoon held a lengthy press conference on the nuclear deal with Iran, but one reporter asked the leader of the free world about the rape allegations against Bill Cosby, and if he would consider revoking Cosby’s Presidential Medal of Freedom given to him by President George W. Bush.
The President insisted “there’s no precedent, for revoking a medal, we don’t have that mechanism,” and he said he doesn’t usually comment “on cases where there might still be if not criminal, then civil issues involved.”
.@POTUS on @BillCosby: “Any civilized country should have no tolerance for rape” http://t.co/KOcrNbyOH7 http://t.co/HqkGDCSRzB
— CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) July 15, 2015
But, after a brief pause, the President added, “I’ll say this. “If you give a woman — or a man, for that matter — without his or her knowledge a drug and then have sex with that person without consent, that’s rape.”
The comments exploded on Twitter, Model Beverly Johnson, who has accused Cosby of drugging her, offered this tweet:
President Obama states on TV that drugging and having sex with a woman after is called Rape!!! @WhoopiGoldberg @cnnkyra @LinseyDavis
— Beverly Johnson (@BeverlyJohnson1) July 15, 2015
Dozens of women have accused Bill Cosby of drugging and then raping them.
“More than 40 women have accused Cosby of rape, including fashion models Beverly Johnson and Janice Dickinson,” ThinkProgress reports today. “Most of their stories reveal a similar pattern, although Cosby’s been able to elude charges for decades — and maintain the support of his celebrity friends. But last week, that deniability went out the window when a judge unsealed a document from 2005 in which Cosby admits to purchasing Quauludes to give women he wanted to have sex with.”
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