After the phone interview with Delaware radio station WHYY Monday night, a stray comment of his on the issue was also recorded before he hung up: “I don’t think I should take any s*** from anybody on that, do you?”
The former president had been asked whether his remarks comparing Obama’s strong showing in South Carolina to that of Jesse Jackson in 1988 had been a mistake given their impact on his wife Hillary Clinton’s campaign. “No, I think that they played the race card on me,” said Clinton, “and we now know from memos from the campaign and everything that they planned to do it all along.”
“We were talking about South Carolina political history and this was used out of context and twisted for political purposes by the Obama campaign to try to breed resentment elsewhere. And you know, do I regret saying it? No. Do I regret that it was used that way? I certainly do. But you really got to go some to try to portray me as a racist.”The WHYY reporter had raised the issue by asking a question about it, but Clinton didn't exactly stay on message in his response. He said the Obama campaign's implication in response that Clinton was trying to marginalize the two black candidates had been disrespectful to Jackson (whom he called a friend, though he endorsed Obama). "You gotta really go something to play the race card on me, my office is in Harlem," he said. "And Harlem voted for Hillary, by the way." Apparently unaware he was still on the phone with the radio station, Clinton muttered about the question afterward to an aide, "I don't think I should take any shit on that from anybody, do you?"
Asked about Clinton's remarks during a quick campaign stop at a Pittsburgh diner, Obama laughed. "So hold on a second," Obama told reporters. "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 ... These are words that came out of his mouth, not mine."
Who's the Whiner?
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