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Gov. Chris Christie has issued a conditional apology (a.k.a. non-apology) for "anyone who might've been offended" by his remarks claiming African Americans would've preferred having their civil rights voted on by the majority in the 1960s. So, what does Christie again have to say for himself?
The apology came late Tuesday on a radio show appearance:
“Anybody who was offended by what I said, if you’re listening out there tonight, I apologize for that,” he said on New Jersey 101.5’s monthly radio call-in show. “I didn’t mean to offend anybody, and if I did I’m sorry.
"I also recognize that my job, one of my jobs as Governor, is to clearly communicate to people what I’m thinking, every time I open my mouth. And I try to be very good about being very direct about what I say so that there’s no ambiguity but obviously when I was talking last week at the town hall meeting about the civil rights movement in the South, I wasn’t clear enough. I just wasn’t.
"And what I did was, by saying those things, I left them open to misinterpretation and obviously there are some folks out there whose feelings I hurt or sensibilities I offended. And I apologize for that, because that’s my job. My job is to clearly communicate all the time. And so to those folks out there who were somehow offended or concerned about the ambiguity in my statement, I apologize for that because very clearly what I was trying to say, I said yesterday at the press conference about 5 or 6 times."
What did Christie clearly say 5 or 6 times that he had meant to say last week? "The political climate in the South didn’t give them the option to have a referendum back then ... They wished they would have had the option, but the political climate did not permit it, meaning they would not win.”
There. Is that clearer?
(Source: Towleroad)
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