In his briefing today, Press Secretary Robert Gibbs shot down the comparison between Sen. Harry Reid and Former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, saying that “to draw that analogy strains any intellectual enterprise or any reality.”
Gibbs commented on Harry Reid’s description of Obama during the ’08 campaign as “light-skinned” with “no Negro dialect.”
Gibbs said: “Obviously it’s a very poor choice, a very unfortunate choice of words. The president got that apology from Senator Reid, didn’t take offense to it, and has moved on.”
He then addressed the comparisons that have been made between Reid and former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, who resigned after controversy over his remark that the U.S. would have been better off if segregationist Presidential candidate Strom Thurmond had been elected in 1948.
Gibbs said: “I don’t understand exactly how one draws the analogy from a former majority leader expressing his support for the defeat of Harry Truman in 1948 so that Strom Thurmond would be president, running on a states’ rights ticket. I don’t see how that’s analogous to what Senator Reid was saying.”
He continued: “I understand what people have to say on TV or to get themselves on TV. I would suggest they spend about 20 seconds reading a little history and figuring out that to draw that analogy strains any intellectual enterprise or any reality.”
