The Republican nominee for the Michigan House of Representatives sparked outrage earlier this week when he compared opposition to the cancellation of the 2020 election to telling his daughters, “If rape is unavoidable, you should just lie back and enjoy it.”
Robert Reagan, who recently won the Republican primary in Michigan’s 74th district, was on a Facebook Live for the right-wing Michigan Salvation Coalition when he cracked an outrageous joke.
“We are a year after the elections, we are a year later, guys. It’s too late,” GOP strategist Amber Harris said of Donald Trump’s 2020 defeat.
This prompted Regan to respond, “I have the same attitude as a parent of three daughters.”
“I tell my daughters, ‘If rape is unavoidable, you should just lie back and enjoy it,’ so that’s not how we roll and that’s not how we won this election.”
Two of the five other speakers were visibly shaken by the comment.
Harris criticized the comparison as “shameful”.
Live host Adam de Angeli noted that their conversation was being streamed live on YouTube before adding, “Probably not long after what Robert said.”
De Angeli later told local outlet WXYZ that Regan had “misspoken” and that it “might not be the best analogy, but he spoke impromptu”.
Robert Reagan (bottom left) participated in a Facebook live stream for the Save Michigan Coalition when he made two inflammatory comments that drew nationwide attention – a rape joke over allegations of rigged 2020 elections and clear sympathy for the Russian leader’s intrusion Vladimir Putin to Ukraine.
Regan said he was taken out of context when the Michigan station contacted him for comment in a text message blaming the outrage on “a leftist group doing what they do.”
He told another local outlet, Bridge Michigan, that he was criticized for being right about the election and apologized, saying he was “not a politician”.
“Sometimes my words are not as smooth and polished as those of politicians because I am not a politician. I’m working on it,” Regan said.
“The only reason the (politically) leftist trolls attack you is because they know you are right over the target, striking straight at the problem. If you miss the mark, they leave you alone.”
The Michigan Freedom Foundation, a conservative group founded by former Trump administration education secretary Betsy DeVos, said Regan’s “disgusting” comment should disqualify him from holding public office.
“I am a mother of four little girls. Every day I teach them to stand up for themselves, know their worth, and fight back against scumbags like Regan,” chief executive Tory Sachs said in a statement.
“E.J. Reagan has no place next to the State Capitol, and that is why we supported and supported his opponent.”
Regan (pictured campaigning at school) previously ran for Michigan’s 74th district in 2020. At the time, his daughter, Stephanie Regan, publicly urged voters on Twitter not to vote for him.
Regan’s outrageous remarks were also criticized by both the Democratic and Republican parties in Michigan.
Michigan Republican Party chairman Ron Weiser, who served as U.S. ambassador to Slovakia under George W. Bush, said the comment was “just over the top.”
“We are better than this as a party and I absolutely expect more than this from our candidates,” Weiser said in a statement.
Democratic Party Chairwoman Lavora Barnes urged Republicans to continue condemning Regan.
“This type of language is abhorrent and Michigan Republicans should stand up and denounce Regan’s remarks and what his candidacy represents,” Barnes said.
Regan’s rape joke was made in response to false claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Donald Trump.
His Democratic opponent Carol Glanville, whom Reagan will face in the May 3 snap election, also criticized his remark.
“As a woman, a person and a public servant, I am stunned that a person who wants to hold public office holds such beliefs. Rape is never inevitable, acceptable or justified and is the worst kind of personal abuse,” Glanville tweeted.
Regan was also heavily criticized for appearing to be sympathetic to Russia’s autocrat Vladimir Putin over his invasion of Ukraine during another moment of the live broadcast.
He said Putin “understands that the United States cannot be trusted to protect him from corrupt Ukraine, the world capital of money laundering, human trafficking and drugs.”
The Republican appeared to have crossed into anti-Semitic territory when Michigan News 8 asked him bluntly if he supported Putin’s unprovoked and bloody invasion of Ukraine.
“I would not say that I specifically support the activities of Vladimir Putin,” Reagan began.
“All I was trying to suggest is that when I see someone like George Soros say that we absolutely need to support Ukraine, and I see all the media jump on board and say: “We are all must support Ukraine and condemn Putin,” we have simply lied to me for the past two years.
Carol Glanville, a Democrat running against Regan in May’s state election, joined in the criticism of his comment.
Soros, the Hungarian-American billionaire, is often cited by the alt-right as the figurehead of what they erroneously see as a Jewish-controlled elite ruling class.
The May special election is not Regan’s first attempt to represent Michigan’s 74th district.
His candidacy made national headlines in 2020 when one of his daughters, Stephanie Regan, publicly urged voters not to elect her father.
‘[I]If you’re in Michigan and you’re 18+, please, for God’s sake, don’t vote for my father as state representative. tell everyone,” the teen wrote in a now-deleted Twitter post on June 23, 2020, according to Business Insider.
Regan released a statement in which he claims to support his daughter and her right to express her own views.
He then blamed their political split on the “Marxist” education he said she received in college.
“A lot of students, when they go to these liberal campuses like the University of Colorado, the University of Texas and Austin – and she went to the University of Colorado Boulder – and you know, they are just drawn into this Marxist, communist ideology, and we we just don’t see eye to eye when it comes to all of socialism, communism, Marxist philosophy,” Regan told The Hill at the time.