Watch What Happens When Indiana Gov. Mike Pence Tells Fox News ‘I Abhor Discrimination’

Mike Pence seeks comfort in the arms of Fox News, but what happens when he gets asked if he’d sign a nondiscrimination bill?

Remember back in January when Gov. Mike Pence announced the State of Indiana was creating a full-fledged news service, that amounted to state-run propaganda, like Russia and the Soviet Union before it did for decades?

One opinion columnist, just before Pence was forced to kill the project, wrote, “Mike Pence Fails Political Crisis Management Test,” and suggested to Pence he should “learn when to cut your losses and fully accept responsibility for a mistake.”

Clearly, Gov. Pence did not read that column.

Now Pence is at the center of a national scandal that literally is threatening the livelihoods of possibly thousands of Hoosiers, all because he ignored critics and signed into law the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

Another opinion column over the weekend labeled this firestorm “the deepest crisis of his political career.”

Clearly, Gov. Pence did not read that column either.

Last night, Mike Pence penned an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal, doubling down on the importance of his Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

In that WSJ op-ed, he lies.

“In fact, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act reflects federal law, as well as law in 30 states nationwide,” Pence declares, falsely.

It gets worse.

Pence writes that his RFRA “simply mirrors federal law that President Bill Clinton signed in 1993.”

That’s a lie, unless he’s using a very, very loose interpretation of the word “mirrors.”

My dictionary uses the words “twin, replica, copy, match, parallel” as synonyms for “mirrors.”

Indiana’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act “mirrors” the federal 1993 law about as closely as a jackal mirrors a kitten.

(For a good analysis of the differences, read ThinkProgress’s report.) 

Meanwhile, Pence went on “Fox & Friends” this morning to verbalize his WSJ op-ed, in which he writes:

I abhor discrimination. I believe in the Golden Rule that you should “do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” If I saw a restaurant owner refuse to serve a gay couple, I wouldn’t eat there anymore. As governor of Indiana, if I were presented a bill that legalized discrimination against any person or group, I would veto it.

He repeated those words on Fox News.

And as he droned on and on this morning, claiming his RFRA does not discriminate, the Fox co-hosts tried to interrupt but were unsuccessful, until Elisabeth Hasselbeck interjected.

“Would you take it one step further and support a law that would make it illegal for someone to discriminate based on sexual orientation?,” Hasselbeck asked.

“Well…,” Pence began. “Let me say that’s not been my position, that’s not been the position of the state of Indiana, but if the legislature brought that up they can certainly have that debate.”

They can certainly have that debate?

After “the deepest crisis of his political career,” Gov. Mike Pence is still adamantly refusing to sign a non-discrimination bill into law, offering further proof his Religious Freedom Restoration Act was absolutely intended to be discriminatory.

 

Related:

‘FIX THIS NOW’ Indy Star Editorial Says Indiana Is In ‘A State Of Crisis’

Jeb Bush: Americans Don’t Know ‘The Facts’ On Indiana ‘Religious Freedom’ Law

How’s This For Proof Mike Pence Is Lying When He Says His Anti-Gay Bill Isn’t About Discrimination?

 

Image: Screenshot via Fox News