The Republican Party of Louisiana slammed a Democratic lawmaker’s joke about Kellyanne Conway on Thursday, calling it “sexism at its worse.”
The state GOP called on Rep. Cedric Richmond (D-La.) to apologize for his “deeply offensive remark regarding Kellyanne Conway” at the Washington Press Club Foundation’s congressional dinner the night before.
“Using inappropriate sexual innuendos to demean women is sexism at its worse,” the state GOP said in a statement.
“Given that March is Women’s History Month, Congressman Richmond’s remarks about the first woman to successfully manage a US presidential campaign are especially disgusting.”
{mosads}During the dinner Wednesday, Richmond cracked a joke about a viral photo of top White House adviser Kellyanne Conway sitting on a couch in the Oval Office with her legs tucked under her.
“I really just want to know what was going on [in the Conway photo], because I won’t tell anybody and you can just explain to me that circumstance, because she really looked to me familiar in that position. Don’t answer — and I don’t want you to refer back to the 1990s,” Richmond said.
His joke was a response to one made by Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) shortly before, who referred to the outrage over the Conway photo and made an oblique reference to former President Bill Clinton’s sexual relationship with Monica Lewinsky in the White House in the 1990s.
Some audience members believed his joke referred to a sexual act, but Richmond issued a statement on Thursday insisting that was not what he meant.
“Since some people have interpreted my joke to mean something that it didn’t I think it is important to clarify what I meant,” Richmond said.
“Where I grew up saying that someone is looking or acting ‘familiar’ simply means that they are behaving too comfortably,” he continued, saying he was referring to Conway’s “inappropriate posture” during a meeting with 60 leaders of historically black colleges and universities in the room.