Bill Clinton Bristles Anew Over Questions About ‘Race Card’
Former President Bill Clinton had a testy encounter Tuesday with reporters who questioned his remarks in a radio interview in which he accused Barack Obama’s campaign of unfairly playing the race card on him.
“You always follow me around and play these little games,” Clinton shot back at an ABC News reporter who questioned him about a phone interview with Philadelphia public radio station WHYY.
On Monday, an audibly irritated Clinton railed against the Obama campaign for what he described as an effort to twist comments made in South Carolina on Jan. 26, the Palmetto State’s presidential primary election day.
In the remarks that sparked the furor, Clinton compared Obama’s campaign to that of civil rights activist Jesse Jackson.
“Jesse Jackson won in South Carolina twice in ‘84 and’88, and he ran a good campaign, and Senator Obama has run a good campaign. He has run a good campaign everywhere. He’s got a good — He is a good candidate with a good organization,” Clinton said.
Obama supporters said the remarks were meant to belittle Obama by comparing him with a black candidate whose appeal was more narrow. Obama called the remarks hallmarks of the politics of racism.
Asked Monday if he regretted the comment, Clinton responded: “No, I think that they played the race card on me, and we now know from memos in the campaign and everything that they planned to do it all along.
“Do I regret saying it? No. Do I regret that it was used that way? I certainly do. But you’ve really got to go some (distance) to portray me as a racist,” Clinton said, adding that he has an office in Harlem, and Jackson told him personally he was not offended.
“I called him and asked him if he found anything offensive. And he just laughed and he said, ‘Of course I don’t. We all know what’s going on,’ ” Clinton said.
Clinton told WHYY that he has “conceded that this was used against me, but this was a conversation that occurred early in the morning. We didn’t even know what the vote was going to be at the time. We were all sitting around, drinking coffee — we just finished breakfast — and we were starting, we were talking about South Carolina political history.
“And this was used out of context, and this was twisted for political purposes by the Obama campaign to try to breed resentment elsewhere.”
The former president added a more colorful remark at the end of an interview when he appeared to think he was off-mic.
“I don’t think I should take any sh** from anybody on that, do you?” he apparently asked someone in the room.
A reporter on Tuesday asked Clinton what he meant when he said the Obama campaign was playing the race card on him.
Clinton responded: “No, no, no, that’s not what I said. … You always follow me around and play these little games. And I am not going to play your games today. This is a day about Election Day. Go back and see what the question was, and what my answer was. You have mischaracterized it just to get another cheap story to divert the American people from the real urgent issues before us, and I choose not to play your game today.”
Faced with questions about the former president’s remarks, Obama said he simply didn’t understand Clinton’s point.
“So hold on a second,” Obama told reporters with a chuckle. “So former President Clinton dismissed my victory in South Carolina as being similar to Jesse Jackson and he is suggesting that somehow I had something to do with it? OK, well, you better ask him what he meant by that.”
His campaign spokesman dismissed it with more glee.
“The secret memo? Where we put the idea in his head to say what he said so he can blame us for having said it?” spokesman Robert Gibbs said with a wink. “That would be pretty good if we could do that.”
Hillary Clinton sidestepped questions at a campaign stop in Pennsylvania about her husband’s remarks.
“I think we’re going to stay focused on what voters are focused on,” she said.
Clinton’s recollection of the Jan. 26 comment is a problem his wife has had to deal with throughout her campaign. While Clinton recalls the comments coming over coffee, the specific remark most people refer to came during an impromptu television interview with an ABC reporter. No breakfast or coffee was immediately visible in video of the interview that was given outdoors.
Click here to hear Bill Clinton’s WHYY interview on YouTube.
Click here to see an ABC video clip of Obama responding to the remarks and Clinton’s comments.
No sympathy for Bill here. There used to be a tradition (up until Bill) where former Presidents tended to stay away from profitting off their days in office, and engaging in overt election time politics. Not so with Bill. ‘Bout time he doesn’t get an automatic pass. He puts himself in the game and should expect to take some lumps.
Deborah,
I think you listen to Fox news too much they scared the hell out of you. Politics of fear is planted on you, I feel sorry for you.
Voters should understand that the Clintons are never what they appear to be. The reason they mis-speak all the time is they have a problem with the truth. People that lie all the time have a problem remembering the lies they tell. So much for the truth, the first thing to fall in an election.
Is anyone surprised by this spin-job coming from a known pathological liar?
I shudder to think what will happen to our country if these two snakes (Hillary and Bill) end up back in the White House! It will be lie after lie after lie after…oh wait, excuse me…”misstatement” after “misstatement”.
The Clintons’ make a living out of “misspeaking”.
Set the record straight-almost every war we have been involved in was started by, or, we entered it while a republican was in office-republicans are well known for getting into wars-if there had been a democrat in office at the time we probably wouldnt be over in iraq right now-
Remember Obama .once a muslin always a Muslin..
What is this saying to us
From Dreams of My Father:
I never emulate white men and brown men whose
fates didn’t speak to my own. It was into my father’s image, the black man,
son of Africa, that I’d packed all the attributes I sought in myself, the
attributes of Martin and Malcolm, DuBois and Mandela.
From Audacity of Hope:
I will stand with the Muslims should the political
winds shift in an ugly direction.
And people are wishing to have this clod back in the White House???
Thank God he did not have a cigar at the time.
It was indeed a racist remark; African-Americans learned can discern the difference and Clinton Brand will never be the same.
I have never been a fan of the clintons and I admit I know even less about the other guy what ever his name is. I do think that john Mc. has more to offer the country than the other two do. He has 2 son’s and both are in the military. I am A vet of the Army I have 2 honorable discharges on the wall. Regular Army. John is a guy I can relate too. The clintons are not for people like me meaning working Americans. The kind who work 10 or more hours a day in a saw mill. I do not know about the what ever his name is he maybe a ok guy. I won’t know until I look him in the eye. I have looked the clintons in the eyes and I could see out the back of their heads. So far fo me it is John. JD