{"id":17949,"date":"2015-07-15T20:08:06","date_gmt":"2015-07-15T20:08:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/?p=17949"},"modified":"2015-07-15T20:09:43","modified_gmt":"2015-07-15T20:09:43","slug":"obama-weighs-in-on-cosby-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/?p=17949","title":{"rendered":"Obama Weighs In On Cosby"},"content":{"rendered":"

Obama, Confronted With Bill Cosby Question, Shares Message Of Zero Tolerance For Rape<\/h1>\n

He added that no ‘civilized country’ should permit it.<\/h2>\n

by Sam Levine
\nThe Huffington Post<\/p>\n

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WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama said Wednesday that “there’s no precedent for revoking” Bill Cosby’s Presidential Medal Of Freedom after multiple women have come forward and accused the comedian of raping them.<\/p>\n

“We don’t have that mechanism,” Obama said during a press conference at the White House.<\/p>\n

While Obama said he did not want to comment on an ongoing investigation, he added that any civilized country should not permit rape.<\/p>\n

“If you give a woman, or a man for that matter, without his or her knowledge, a drug, and then have sex with that person without their consent, that’s rape,” Obama said. “And this country, any civilized country, should have no tolerance for rape.”<\/p>\n

A White House petition<\/a> calling on Obama to revoke the medal had earned over 10,000 signatures by Wednesday afternoon.\u00a0Angela Rose, executive director of anti-sexual assault group PAVE, the organization behind the petition, said in a statement that Obama had effectively called Cosby a rapist in his comments.<\/p>\n

Cosby was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom<\/a>, the country’s highest civilian honor, in 2002.<\/p>\n

Several women have come forward and said that Cosby drugged and raped them decades ago — allegations Cosby has denied. The Los Angeles Police Department <\/a>said earlier this month that it had opened an investigation into sexual assault allegations against Cosby. Documents from a 2005 civil lawsuit against the actor\u00a0released earlier this month<\/a> seem to indicate Cosby admitted to obtaining quaaludes to give to women he wanted to have sex with.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Obama, Confronted With Bill Cosby Question, Shares Message Of Zero Tolerance For Rape He added that no ‘civilized country’ should permit it. by Sam Levine The Huffington Post WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama said Wednesday that “there’s no precedent for … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17949","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17949","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17949"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17949\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17949"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17949"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17949"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}