Mark Haperin Calls The President a Vulgar Name Live on Joe MSNBC
ABC News' Jon Garcia (@GarciaJon) reports:“The comment that was made was inappropriate ("Obama is a dick"*). It would be inappropriate to say that about any president of either party. And on behalf of the White House I expressed that sentiment to executives at the network,” Carney said. “I have no comment on that -- whatever action that network, any network, any newspaper or whatever might make and -- because that's not for us to decide, and we didn't -- certainly -- you know, we just expressed our concern about the inappropriateness of the comment.”Obama’s Press Secretary Jay Carney was asked to respond to MSNBC contributor Mark Halperin’s use of off-color and vulgar language to characterize the president. Halperin, who is Time magazine’s Editor-At-Large and a former ABC News Political Director, said on MSNBC’s Morning Joe program that the President was being a “dick” during a press conference Wednesday. Though the show’s host, Joe Scarborough, called out immediately for the comment to be bleeped, it went out on air uncensored.
Carney added that he didn’t think all the TVs in the West Wing were tuned into MSNBC all the time. “I think we mix it up,” he said.
Halperin immediately apologized on the air for the remark but was suspended indefinitely by MSNBC.
Obama’s campaign and long-time advisor David Axelrod told the Washington Post’s The Plum Line blog that “what (Halperin) said was obviously stupid and tasteless, and he exercised poor judgment. … I think he’d be the first to acknowledge that. I strongly disagree with his analysis. But I’ve known him for decades. he’s a decent person and a good journalist. I’m sure that no one regrets this more than he does,” Axelrod said.
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