Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl (R-AZ) has been lampooned in recent days after his office clarified his wildly inaccurate comments about Planned Parenthood on the Senate Floor last week by telling CNN it was “not intended to be a factual statement.” Yesterday, Kyl walked back his walk back, saying he “misspoke” on the floor and that the “factual statement” statement “was not me — that was my press person.” Now, that very press person is falling on his (non-factual) sword, admitting to the Arizona Republic that his statement “made no sense”:
Ryan Patmintra, Sen. Jon Kyl’s Washington, D.C.-based press secretary, today issued a statement to The Arizona Republic taking responsibility for his office’s widely lampooned claim that a public Kyl misstatement about Planned Parenthood was “not intended to be a factual statement.”
“Senator Kyl misspoke when he incorrectly cited a statistic on the Senate floor last week regarding Planned Parenthood,” Patmintra said. “Rather than simply state that in response to a media inquiry, I responded that his comment was not intended to be a factual statement; a comment that, in retrospect, made no sense. Senator Kyl neither saw nor approved that response.”
So neither Kyl’s original statement nor his press aide’s refutation of it were intended to be factual statements.