U.S. Rep. Jason Lewis (R-MN) once mocked several women who say they were traumatized by unwanted touching and/or unwanted sexual advances. On his radio show in 2012, before becoming a Congressman, Lewis at one point talked about women who had said then-GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain had sexually harassed them.
“I don’t want to be callous here, but how traumatizing was it?” Lewis said, as CNN’s Andrew Kaczynski and Jamie Ehrlich first reported.
“How many women at some point in their life have a man come on to them, place their hand on their shoulder or maybe even their thigh, kiss them, and they would rather not have it happen, but is that really something that’s going to be seared in your memory that you’ll need therapy for?” he asked.
“You’ll never get over? It was the most traumatizing experience? Come on! She wasn’t raped,” Lewis added.
CNN says he was “using a voice mocking an emotionally distraught woman.”
Here’s the audio, via CNN:
Before he was Congressman Lewis, Jason Lewis on his radio show in 2012 lamented he could no longer call women sluts.
In a 2015 blog post Lewis complained that Indiana’s “religious freedom” law, which was created to allow discrimination against LGBT people, “doesn’t go far in enough in allowing discrimination,” against LGBT people.
And in 2013 Lewis compared gay people to rapists, and warned same-sex parents may “harm” children.