Todd Akin: 'Legitimate rape is a law enforcement term'

Former GOP congressman Todd Akin on Thursday claimed that his remarks about "legitimate rape" were taken out of context for political purposes, and that Democrats were really the party with a vendetta against women.

"Legitimate rape is a law enforcement term and its abbreviation for 'legitimate case of rape,'" Akin said in an interview on MSNBC. "This is something that was intentionally misunderstood and twisted for political purposes," he later added.

Akin did accept some culpability, saying he "misspoke some words." But, he continued, "it was intentionally taken out of context. It's made into this great big deal so I'm sort of this villain for the whole world."

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From there, Akin went on to accuse former President Bill Clinton of repeatedly assaulting women, ding Hillary Clinton for, as a public defender decades ago, representing a rapist, and say that several people on his campaign were conceived via rape — a remark that seemed to undermine his comment that a women's body "has ways to shut that whole thing down." --Jon Terbush