During a White House press conference about the Iran nuclear deal, a reporter asked President Barack Obama to respond to the rape allegations against Bill Cosby. In response, Obama strongly implied that Cosby is guilty.
Days after Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) and Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) said they’d take Cosby’s Medal of Freedom away from him, the reporter posed the same question to Obama. Asked if he’d revoke Cosby’s Medal of Freedom, Obama explained, “[with] respect to the Medal of Freedom, there is no precedent for revoking a medal. We don’t have that mechanism. And as you know, I tend to make it a policy not to comment on the specifics of cases where there might still be if not criminal, then civil issues involved.
“I’ll say this: if you give a woman or a man for that matter a drug and then have sex with that person without consent, that’s rape. And I think this country, any civilized country, should have no tolerance for rape.” Watch it:
More than 40 women have accused Cosby of rape, including fashion models Beverly Johnson and Janice Dickinson. Most of their stories reveal a similar pattern, although Cosby’s been able to elude charges for decades — and maintain the support of his celebrity friends. But last week, that deniability went out the window when a judge unsealed a document from 2005 in which Cosby admits to purchasing Quauludes to give women he wanted to have sex with. Since the revelation, Cosby’s sponsors dropped out of their deals like flies.