MSNBC Bends Over Backwards to Excuse Andy Beshear’s Gross JD Vance Rape Comments

When Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear (D) called for making Ohio Senator and Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance “go through” the experience of dealing with a pregnancy from rape on Tuesday morning, neither Mika Brzezinski nor any other member of the Morning Joe crew objected.

“I mean, JD Vance calls pregnancy resulting from rape inconvenient. Like inconvenience is traffic. I mean, it is — make him go through this!” exclaimed Beshear.

Vance was, of course, incensed by the remark. In a post on X, formerly Twitter, he asked “What the hell is this?” and called Beshear “disgusting.” His communications director, meanwhile, called on Vice President and Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris to “repudiate” Beshear’s sentiments.

As the attention on and horror at Beshear’s comments grew, Andrea Mitchell decided to bring him back on MSNBC’s airwaves not to redeem her network for letting them pass unchallenged before, but to excuse him for them.

“JD Vance, I don’t know if you know this,” began Mitchell with an inexplicable chuckle, “is blasting what you said this morning on Morning Joe . Okay, I’m going to just prepare you for this, saying that when, when — well, let me take a look at what he said about you.”

She then proceeded to play the clip of Beshear from earlier in the day.

“So what he’s saying is that you were somehow suggesting,  he [Vance] said, ‘What the hell is this? Why is Andy Beshear’ — he tweeted this out — ‘wishing that a member of my family would get raped? What a disgusting person.'”

“So how do you respond to that?” she asked with another laugh. “I mean, is that what you were talking about?”

“Of course not, it’s ridiculous, but it’s also deflection. I mean, JD Vance knows that he and Donald Trump are so wrong on this issue, and so he’s trying to make himself the victim,” replied Beshear before going on to argue that, “As a man, JD Vance will never have to face any of this personally. But it’s sad that he lacks the empathy to be able to put himself in a different position and to understand why having exceptions, having reproductive freedom is so important in the first place. Obviously I’d never wish harm on anyone. It just again, deflection trying to make himself and Donald Trump the victims.”

Mitchell quickly moved on without any pushback, instead prompting Beshear to talk about abortion more generally.

Oh, and the chyron that accompanied the segment? That read “Gov. Beshear Responds to New Attack From JD Vance.”

It’s more than possible that Beshear misspoke, and it’s almost certainly true that Beshear does not want a member of the Vance family to be raped. But even if one or both of those is true, it doesn’t make up for fact that he said on national television that Vance should be made to “go through” such a horrific experience. Regardless of what he meant, he said those words — and anyone who tells you otherwise is lying.

Beashear chose to lie. Instead of acknowledging what he said, apologizing for it, and explaining that he misspoke, he flatly denied what he had done. Worse yet, Mitchell and her network not only allowed him to lie to their audience, but teed him up to do so by laughing at Vance, framing his reaction as utterly preposterous, and treating Beshear like he was the victim of some kind of vicious attack launched by Vance .

It’s gross, it’s dishonest, and the MSNBC employees acting as Beshear’s flacks should be as embarrassed and ashamed of this episode as the governor himself.

Watch above via MSNBC.