President Obama regrets the comments he made Wednesday night about the arrest of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. – but only in the sense that it’s become such a distraction from the health care debate, Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said Friday morning.
In response to reporters’ questions at the White House, Gibbs said if the President knew “just how much of an overall distraction and obsession it would be, I think he would regret distracting [the media] with obsessions.”
Gibbs did not say that Obama was apologizing for his comments, which included saying the Cambridge police “acted stupidly” in arresting Gates outside of his own home last Thursday.
The Hill reports that “Gibbs said the president was probably ‘not altogether surprised that somebody’ asked him about the incident.” While unsurprised at being asked about it, Obama has said he’s “surprised by the controversy” over what he saw as “pretty straight forward commentary that you probably don’t need to handcuff a guy, a middle-aged man who uses a cane, who’s in his own home.”
