CNN’s Jake Tapper was astounded at comments Rep. Steve King made Wednesday defending rape and incest in the case of his anti-abortion stance.

“Why does, Why, Why does he say things like that?” Tapper in shock asked Former Republican House Intelligence Chairman Mike Rogers. “You’re asking me?” Rogers responded.

“He was a colleague of yours. I don’t understand. He’s literally defending rape and incest as ‘well it produced people.'” said Tapper.

“This is not the first time that Congressman King has inserted his foot in his mouth. And it appears that maybe he got both of them in his mouth on this particular one,” said Rogers. “And a few other people’s I think,” said Tapper.

Earlier Wednesday, Rep. King asked if there “would be any population of the world left” if it weren’t for rape or incest. This was in defense of his push for anti-abortion legislation that would not allow exceptions in the case of rape or incest.

Rogers asserted that King does not speak for Republicans.

“I understand this is a heightened political season and everybody wants a pound of flesh from the other team,” he said, before adding that King needed to correct his comments but “we shouldn’t drag this across the country as one group of Americans who believes certain things are bad and horrible and racist people and the other ones are not.”

Rogers then segued into a conversation about racism. “if every conversation is only about race and insinuating race and racism, from both sides by the way, I’m telling you, we’re going to have a problem getting back to normalcy after the 2020 election.”

He said that President Donald Trump does need to change his language, but the radicalization of white nationalists can’t be fixed by law enforcement. “You have to get into the stream earlier and we’re not talking about that and the reason is 2020 election,” said Rogers.

Watch above via CNN.

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