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‘You can’t call her a slut?’: GOP congressman makes bigoted remarks about women in newly unearthed audio

‘Is birth control really that important to you ladies?’

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July 19, 2018 at 3:05 p.m. EDT

Adapted from a story by The Washington Post’s Eli Rosenberg.

Rep. Jason Lewis (R-Minn.) made bigoted remarks about women on a radio show before his time in office, according to newly unearthed audio released Wednesday and published by CNN.

In the recording, Lewis, who is up for reelection in a competitive congressional district near Minneapolis, wondered why he could not label a woman a “slut.”

Prior to becoming a congressman, Lewis hosted the “Jason Lewis Show,” a syndicated radio program, from 2009 until 2014.

CNN reviewed 15 months of audio from Lewis’s show. The news organization acquired the material from Michael Brodkorb, a former Republican Party official in Minnesota who wrote about some of Lewis’s remarks in a February 2016 column for the Star Tribune.

In addition to his comments about the word “slut,” remarks reported by CNN include:

• In August 2012, Lewis said that women who vote for Democrats “are guided by more emotion than reason.” He wondered why Mitt Romney, then a presidential candidate, had “an issue with women.” “Maybe it isn’t Romney or his positions. Maybe it’s the women,” he said.

• In November 2012, Lewis said women who vote for Democrats are “playing into that stereotype that they’re not thinking.” He went on: “Is birth control really that important to you ladies? Is that really the most important thing that you get your condoms for free?”

• In another November 2012 broadcast, Lewis said women who voted in the election based on birth control coverage are “without a brain. You have no, you have no cognitive function whatsoever. If that's all it takes to buy you off.”

‘Can we call anybody a slut?’

Some of Lewis’s remarks followed the uproar after conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh called Sandra Fluke, then a Georgetown Law student hoping to testify to Congress about how her health-care plan would not pay for birth control, “a slut” in February 2012.

Lewis spoke out against the outcry and defended Limbaugh.

“Well, the thing is, can we call anybody a slut? This is what begs the question,” Lewis said. “But it used to be that women were held to a little bit of a higher standard. We required modesty from women. Now, are we beyond those days where a woman can behave as a slut, but you can’t call her a slut?”

He went on to explain why Limbaugh used the term to describe Fluke.

“Now Limbaugh’s reasoning was, look, if you’re demanding that the taxpayers pay for your contraception, you must use a lot of them and therefore, ergo, you’re very sexually active and in the old days, what we used to call people who were in college or even graduate school who were sexually active, we called them sluts,” Lewis said. “Especially if you want somebody to pay for it.”

Still, he admitted that he believed that Limbaugh’s remarks were a “stretch,” an “aspect of entertainment radio,” then went on to wonder why someone couldn’t refer to Madonna “as a slut” without the fear of being sued.

“What did we call those people 30 years ago, 40 years ago, 50 years ago?” he said. “You can’t do that today, it’s too politically incorrect.”

In a statement to CNN, Fluke said Lewis’s “attitude toward the women of his district and this country is incredibly insulting and beneath any member of the United States Congress.”

“Americans stood with me and resoundingly rejected such uncivil and demeaning attacks from public figures back in 2012,” she continued. “Since then, the brave women of the #MeToo movement have again reminded all of us that disparaging women with insults like ‘slut’ and ‘parasite,’ is an attempt to silence them from speaking up and fighting for comprehensive healthcare they can afford.”

Lewis’s defense

Lewis’s remarks have long drawn scrutiny. In the run-up to the 2016 election, the Atlantic called him “Minnesota’s mini-Trump,” and noted his history of incendiary remarks on race and gender.

Becky Alery, his campaign spokeswoman, said in a statement that, as Lewis had said before, it was “his job to be provocative while on the radio.”

“This has all been litigated before,” Alery said.