Obama Caught On Tape Calling Kanye West a "Jackass"
ABC apologizes for errant Tweet
By DANIEL MACHT
Updated 4:43 PM EDT, Tue, Sep 15, 2009
President Obama has weighed in on Kanye West’s tirade at the MTV Video Music Awards, and not just in this hilarious mash-up of the president’s recent speech to Congress.
In real life, TMZ caught Obama on tape calling West a “jackass” during an interview with CNBC. The only problem: the president was apparently speaking candidly in an off-the-record portion of the interview, which ABC newsman Terry Moran also then re-broadcast to his more than one million followers on Twitter.
"Pres. Obama just called Kanye West a 'jackass' for his outburst at VMAs when Taylor Swift won. Now THAT'S presidential," Moran wrote.
It was unclear whether Moran overheard Obama’s West-bashing quote or got it from a portion of transcripts that went out to other reporters.
But really, who would disagree with Obama's take?
West has been panned for interrupting country star Taylor Swift’s VMA acceptance speech -- saying Beyonce deserved her award instead.
Since the outburst, the rapper gave three apologies for his behavior and now says that he needs to take time off to “improve himself.”
After realizing Obama's quote was not supposed to be made public, Moran quickly deleted his errant tweet and ABC later issued this statement to Politico:
In the process of reporting on remarks by President Obama that were made during a CNBC interview, ABC News employees prematurely tweeted a portion of those remarks that turned out to be from an off-the-record portion of the interview. This was done before our editorial process had been completed. That was wrong. We apologize to the White House and CNBC and are taking steps to ensure that it will not happen again.
The White House has not commented on the reports.
First Published: Sep 15, 2009 1:22 AM EDT
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