The Slatest

Akin: Paul Ryan Told Me To Step Down

Rep. Darrell Issa (right) talks to Rep. Todd Akin, R.-Mo., outside the RNC headquarters in March 2011
Rep. Darrell Issa (right) talks to Rep. Todd Akin, R.-Mo., outside the RNC headquarters in March 2011

Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images.

The Todd Akin Apology Tour continued Wednesday with sit-down interviews with at least a pair of the network morning shows.

We’ve embedded the clip from NBC’s Today show below, and you can find his appearance on ABC’s Good Morning America here.

The big takeaways:

—Paul Ryan personally called Akin to ask him to drop out yesterday. “Yes, Paul Ryan did give me a call and he felt I had to make a decision, but he advised me that it would be good for me to step down,” the Missouri Republican told Matt Lauer.

—Akin is leaving the door open ever so slightly on the possibility that he’ll still get out. “I’m never going to say everything that could possibly happen,” he told George Stephanopoulos. “I don’t know the future, but I do know this. I know that the [Republican] party voters took a look at our hearts, understood who we were, had a chance to meet us in many, many different ways and made a decision.”

—He admits that he got the medical facts wrong when he suggested over the weekend that the “female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down,” in regards to pregnancy from rape. “I was misinformed and I recognize that,” Akin told Lauer after the host told him that his medical facts were “just plain wrong.”