Michigan GOP Leaders Condemn Their Own Nominee

The Detroit Free Press reports:

Michigan state and local Republican leaders are condemning comments made by a GOP state House candidate who recently suggested rape victims “lie back and enjoy it,” after he spent months parroting pandemic conspiracy theories and sharing anti-Semitic rhetoric.

However, Michigan Republican Party Chairman Ron Weiser and others affiliated with the party are not calling on Robert “RJ” Regan to withdraw from a special state House election, a race where he’s a heavy favorite.

“Having three daughters, and I tell my daughters, ‘well if rape is inevitable, you should just lie back and enjoy it so.’ That’s not how we roll, that’s not how I won this election. We go right at it,” Regan said, according to a video of the panel posted on Rumble.

Media Matters reports:



Regan, the GOP-backed nominee for a Michigan state House seat, used the right-wing video site Rumble to endorse the killings of President Joe Biden, Prime Ministers Jacinda Ardern of New Zealand and Boris Johnson of the United Kingdom, and Dr. Anthony Fauci, among others.

Regan has also frequently shared right-wing media-fueled conspiracy theories on social media, including advising people to “study” and “apply” QAnon to their lives like they do with the Bible, and falsely claiming that Capitol Police officer Eugene Goodman “staged” his famous face down with insurrectionists inside the Capitol.

Regan is a 2020 election conspiracy theorist and has claimed that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is a “fake war just like the fake pandemic.”