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.
If Obama wants to be in politics he needs to leave race at the door. If you cannot take the heat, get a thicker skin or get out of the kitchen. Not everything is a racial statement. Not every one who uses the word ‘boy’ is meaning a black man. Not everyone making referrence to Jessie Jackson is demeaning blacks. It seems like Obama is playing the race card more than anyone else in this election. He is black and needs to stop making that an issue. Hillary is a woman. She needs to not make that an issue. These are obvious statements dealing with the obvious. Now, get to dealing with the issues.
Bill Clinton gloated about having his office in Harlem–but let us not forget it was his second choice:
It was only after the ex-president was blasted by taxpayer watchdog groups in selecting an 8,500-square-foot office on the 56th floor of Carnegie Hall Towers in midtown Manhattan that would have cost taxpayers $811,000 a year – more than the cost of the offices of all the other ex-presidents combined– that he decided upon Harlem.
Set straight? Is that Demo NewSpeak? Sounds like Howard needs to return to history 101.
War of 1812, James Madison; Mexican-American War, James K. Polk; WW I, Woodrow Wilson; WWII, Franklin D. Roosevelt; Vietnam, John F. Kennedy. All Democrat presidents.
US Civil War: Republican North attacked by Democrat South.
If Clinton was doing his job instead of playing around on the job we would not be in Iraq now. Clinton could have stopped of the so call 911 that never happened. Get a clue.
Why, why, why is this always about race?
Stick to the issues!
Then we see BO’s true colors, which have nothing to do with race, and everything to do with being a weak and unprepared leader.
Hillary ‘08
Hey Howard, have you actually read a newspaper or history book? You said that most wars were started by republicans. What about Korea and Vietnam? They were started by democrats, but ended by republicans. Oh and there was hat little “Bay of Pigs” action done by a democrat…..
Howard-Please read your history books again. WWI Democart. WWII Democart. Korea-Democart (Turman). Vietnam-Democart (Kenndy-Johnson). Bosnia-Clinton.
bill … you lied to us when you were the prez … and you think you can still lie to us now !!
i find is amazing that the very same media who ran interference for the clintons, now carry barry obamas water
One more historical tidbit: The division of our nation that led to the Civil War occurred under Buchanan (D). Lincoln (R) thankfully came along to bring our nation back together Not unlike Eisenhower (R) bringing an end to the Korean conflict and Nixon (R) ending our involvement in Vietnam. Facts and history are so pesky!