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.
The Master of Spin does it again! The quintessential hippocrite/politician; he says it and then redefines it. As long as the American people continue to tolerate this sort of blantant dishonesty from public servants, and the operative word here is “servant”. His notoriety only exists because of the benevolence and naivete of the most ignorant among us.
The Master of spin…he who systematically avoids the truth because he knows that in the bowels of his humanity where his genuine identifying character breathes the sooty dust of vile and self-serving idolotry, he lies to himself and expects America to listen as if he were more than a former servant no longer employed by the American public.
Funny thing is i ran across a couple die hard young Obama voters that were just talking away about how great Obama is. I asked these young “VOTERS” 3 questions
1. Tell me 4 things Obama has voted on other than the war?
2. Would you sit in a church that preaches hate towards other races?
3. Are you proud of the USA?
———————————————————————-
any guess on what they said?
Lets see
1. “Ummmmm Hummmmm UMmmm I dont know I just know he has vote on good stuff”
2. ” NO but remember he has said he never heard any of that” RIGHT WANNA BUY A PIECE OF LAND ALSO?
3. “YEAH why?” Obama’s Wife has lived here a long long long time and this year id the first time she has ever been proud of the US?
Divide and conquer!
Obama is playing the race card now when he shopping for every vote he can get. This is just a prelude to his presidency. Using the race card shows a weakness in his character.
Many, and rightfully so, have been critical of Senator Obama for the company he keeps namely, Reverend Wright and William Ayers. The former is a blatant racist and anti-semite who believes the U.S. is the cause of evil in the world while the latter is an unapologetic, marxist terrorist who should be in prison for his murderous activities.
Bill Clinton is fair game also since his South Carolina comments were more than subtle racism. Please recall that Clinton’s first and most influential political mentor was J. William Fulbright, the “dixiecrat” arch-segregationist senator from Arkansas who signed the “Southern Manifesto” in 1956 and vehemently fought against the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, The 1965 Voting Rights Act and other legislative proposals that would have given full legal equality to black americans.
Why was not Bill Clinton held to the same standards as Barack Obama? I am not an Obama supporter but Clinton should have been held to the same standard of association.
Bill Clinton is a God send for the Republicans. Just imagine running against both of them! What a dream.
The issue of race has been an issue throughout this campaign…..I’m not sure why the topic is just now being discussed. Do you think all the black Americans supporting Obama would be supporting him if he weren’t black? If there were two white candidates many blacks would support Clinton because Bill was so well liked by the black population. Bill was using the race issue….but so is Obama………..and I would like to read his wife’s thesis….She has publicly stated that she was never proud to be American till now and I cannot believe her beliefs would be too far from her spouses……..
Well looky here. Remember South Carolina ? The Clintons are masters at playing the race card when it will benifit them. Now it seems that they got a taste of there own medicine, and all Billy can do is WHINE ABOUT IT.
I cannot wait until they finally have to drop out of this race and just go away. Far away.
If Hillary Clinton was running on the Dem. ticket alone, she might have a better chance of winning.
Yes, the Clintons do have memory problems. Funny how they can write all those books about their experiences, but can never “recall” things when asked them in an congressional hearing.