Fox co-host Bob Beckel has been facing severe scrutiny ever since he made an insensitive comment about rape on “The Five” Tuesday night.

Beckel, a former Democratic political operative, implied that rape just doesn’t happen on college campuses.

He said: “When was the last time you heard about a rape on campus?”

That’s when his Fox co-hosts, Eric Bolling and Dana Perino, jumped in, trying to correct Beckel’s statement. Both Bolling and Perino agreed that rape, especially date rape, unfortunately occurs on college campuses throughout the nation all the time.

Beckel seemed to dig himself in deeper when he responded: “Well, date rape’s one thing, but what are you going to do, take out your gun and shoot your date?”

It seemed he was making it seem like date rape didn’t pose a risk of death, trying to make a distinction between rape and date rape since, you know, “date rape’s one thing.”

Twitchy provided a roundup of some of the Twitter outrage that was sparked by the co-anchor’s comment.

But Beckel issued a quasi-apology for his rape comments on Wednesday’s show:

“Yesterday, a number of people responded to what I said about date rape as if I didn't think it was a serious issue. Of course I think it's a serious issue. It's a horrible, horrendous issue.

“And it's simply put, this, rape is rape. Whether it's date rape or it's somebody coming in off the campus trying to rape somebody else. I very strongly feel that way. And so, I just want to straighten the record out on that. I simply was trying to make -- there was not a distinction to make here. It simply was that date rape is rape. And that is, by any other definition, rape is rape.”

Check out the footage of Beckel’s comment below:

Twitter