KNIVES ARE OUT

Rachel Maddow Rips Rick Santorum As He Tried To Take Back His “Man-On-Dog Thing”

MSNBC-host-Rachel-Maddow-interviews-GOP-presidential-candidate-Rick-Santorum-on-July-22-2015.-YouTube-410x220Hey, guys, did you see The Rachel Maddow Show last night? If not, you missed a seriously, seriously epic showdown between the MSNBC host and GOP presidential hopeful/antigay activist Rick Santorum.

Not to worry. We are here with the recap: Lagging in the polls, Santorum agreed to sit down with Maddow. Everything started out just fine  until he suggested that Congress should pass a law overturning the Supreme Court ruling on marriage equality, saying that the Court “is not the superior branch of government,” thus giving Maddow a chance to lecture him on civics. Because, really Rick, the Supreme Court is the superior branch of the government, hence the word “Supreme.” As Maddow pointed out, it “adjudicates” the law of the land, emphasis on “judicate.”

Santorum apparently missed the lesson on Marbury v. Madison, the 1803 Supreme Court ruling, back when he was studying law at Penn State.

And that’s when things got wild. Fast.

“Do you believe people choose to be gay?” Maddow asked.

“I’ve never answered that question because I don’t really know the answer to it,” Santorum replied. “But I suspect that there’s all sorts of reasons that people end up the way they are.”

Then he said something positive about ex-gays to the lesbian host before launching into a hypothetical about why abortion must be made illegal to protect potentially gay fetuses.

Later, Maddow asked Santorum about the time he compared homosexuality to “the man-on-dog thing,” (“man on child, man on dog, whatever the case may be”), managing to elicit something that appeared to resemble an apology.

“What I said was, ‘If people have the right to consensual activity, then they have the right to and I listed all these different things,’” Santorum explained, “and I’m just saying, that the court opened a Pandora’s box.”

“You’re thinking bestiality?” Maddow asked.

Santorum said he regretted the “flippant” nature of the comment, blaming the reporter who elicited it for “not being particularly professional.”

“That’s not an excuse for me,” he added. “I take responsibility for what I said.”

“And you regret it?” Maddow asked

“Absolutely,” Santorum replied. “It was a flippant comment that should have come out of my mouth. But the substance of what I said, which is what I’ve referred to, I stand by that. I wish I had not said it in a flippant term that I did, and I know people were offended by it, and I wish I hadn’t said it.”

By this point, it was clear the former senator was getting uncomfortable. Meanwhile, Maddow appeared to be having the time of her life. And it only got better from there.

Watch the entire interview below.

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