Rick Santorum had to hear questions from the media all day yesterday and today about a joke from a supporter, Foster Freiss, the businessman supporting Rick Santorum‘s campaign efforts.
Friess appeared on Andrea Mitchell Reports Thursday afternoon, where host Andrea Mitchell asked him whether he thought Santorum’s pro-life views would hurt his GOP nomination efforts.
“Well, I get such a chuckle when these things come up. Here we have millions of our fellow Americans unemployed, we have jihadists camps being set up in Latin America which Rick has been warning about, and people seem to be so preoccupied with sex that I think it says something about our culture. We maybe need a massive therapy session so we can concentrate on what the real issues are,” he said.
“In my day,” he told Mitchell, “they used Bayer aspirin for contraceptions. The gals put it between their knees and it wasn’t that costly.”
The joke was crass and not something Santorum said but he was barraged by media questions about it, including one from Charlie Rose. That was enough for the pro-life candidate.
SANTORUM: Hold on, Charlie. When you quote a bad joke from a supporter of mine that somehow I’m responsible for, that’s “gotcha.”
ROSE: No one’s saying your responsible, Senator. They’re asking how you would characterize it and what you said to him. Not that you were responsible. It’s to understand how you differ from what this person said.
SANTORUM: So now I’m gonna have to respond to when every supporter says something. Look, this is what you guys do. You don’t do this with President Obama. In fact, with President Obama, you went out and defended him from someone he sat in a church for 20 years and defended him with “Oh, he can’t possibly believe what he listened to for 20 years.” This is a double standard, it’s what you’re pulling off, and I’m gonna call you on it.
