Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO) has yet to retract her comments after she pushed — via Twitter — an untrue story about Donald Trump and his ex-wife.
“Most shocking part of this? Trump’s lawyer thinks it’s legal to rape your spouse. Giving Akin a run for his money,” McCaskill Tweeted, with a link to the Daily Beast story from Tim Mak and Brandon Zadrozny that inaccurately accused Mr. Trump of raping his ex-wife Ivana.
McCaskill was making a comparison between Trump and former Rep. Todd Akin (R-MO), who ran against her in the 2012 election and was abandoned by the Republican Party after he made wildly inaccurate comments about pregnancy and rape.
“From what I understand from doctors, that’s really rare,” Akin said when asked in 2012 on the campaign trail about whether he’d support abortion law exceptions when it comes to pregnancy due to rape or incest. “If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down. But let’s assume that maybe that didn’t work or something, I think there should be some punishment, but the punishment ought to be of the rapist, and not attacking the child.”
The entire Republican Party distanced itself from Akin, and as such McCaskill’s push to try to compare Trump to Akin is about as brutal a political allegation as she can level. McCaskill, a prominent midwestern Democrat, is actively supporting former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination in 2016 and attacked her primary opponent Sen. Bernie Sanders from Vermont as a “socialist” on national television not too long ago.
But, as Breitbart News reported earlier on Tuesday, the entire storyline on which McCaskill—and lots of other Trump detractors—based her attack on him turned out to be inaccurate.
“I have recently read some comments attributed to me from nearly 30 years ago at a time of very high tension during my divorce from Donald. The story is totally without merit. Donald and I are the best of friends and together have raised three children that we love and are very proud of. I have nothing but fondness for Donald and wish him the best of luck on his campaign. Incidentally, I think he would make an incredible president,” Ivana Trump, Donald’s ex-wife, said in a statement to CNN.
Trump continues to surge in polls. McCaskill’s office declined to comment when asked whether she’d retract her Tweet.
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