Embattled New York City mayoral candidate Anthony Weiner told reporters Wednesday that “some” of the prurient online communications he expected to see used against him have come to the public’s attention.
Peppered with questions from reporters about explicit sexting between him and a young woman that surfaced Tuesday, former Congressman Weiner did not directly comment on whether more photos or sex chats may yet come to light.
“It’s been rough. These are things I brought upon myself,” Weiner said, when asked how the last 24 hours have been since the news broke about sexual messages shared after his resignation from Congress. “I thought they were going to come out towards the end of the campaign and some of them have, so I’m pressing forward and I’m running a campaign based on issues. I’m gonna keep doing that and getting a good response.”
Weiner defended why he did not disclose more from his past when he returned to politics, telling reporters, “So many questions have been asked at the time I got in and I answered them the same way. I said there was more than one woman over an extended period of time and that there were pictures out there that were gonna come out.”
Weiner went on to say that he has a hard time thinking of a “better way” to reveal his struggles with sexting to the public. “Perhaps I should have said that it was going to come out at this specific time with this specific person, but there isn’t a whole lot better way to answer these questions,” he said.
Weiner declined to confirm if he used any aliases in his online chats other than “Carlos Danger.” He did say to Breitbart News that he did not view his interview with People Magazine as necessarily dishonest.
“Look, I was going through some things personally,” Weiner explained. “My family was and I tried to be as honest about it where we were at the time, but this thing was still there, and as I said over an extended period of time, it ended–it’s behind me. What the reports are in the paper today are something that was basically a year ago.”