Obama Expresses Outrage Over Former Pastor Jeremiah Wright's Comments
While telling voters he strongly disagreed with Wright's views, he added it would be wrong to dismiss Wright as a "crank or a demagogue."
"As imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me," Obama said then. "I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother."
Tuesday, when a reporter questioned Obama about his judgment, the senator said the "person I saw [Monday] was not the person that I had come to know over 20 years."
Obama maintained he had never heard these types of statements as a parishioner.
"Based on his remarks Tuesday, well, I may not know him as well as I thought either," Obama said.
But some longtime Wright supporters said Wright's in-your-face appearance at the National Press Club was no different from what parishioners regularly experienced in church.
"What you saw is what we saw every single week," said Brenda McGadney-Douglass, an associate professor at the University of Toledo who attended Wright's Monday appearance and was baptized by him. "This is exactly the way things go in our church."
An aide inside Hillary Clinton's campaign told the Daily News that Obama had no choice but to cut his ties to Wright, but the insider predicted his actions Tuesday won't cure the political problem.
"The bigger issue is that they have a relationship that goes back 20 years," the insider said.
Obama declined to speculate on the political fallout of the Wright controversy or say whether he will withdraw from the church.
"Now is the time for us not to get distracted. Now is the time for us to pull together," he said. "That did not matter to Rev. Wright. What mattered was him commanding center stage."
With Kenneth R. Bazinet and Michael McAuliff in Washington
Reader Comments
Lesson
Lesson
Jeremiah Wright
He is a POS
love
The bible that i read says "love thy neighbor as thyself"HUMMMM?This must mean that Rev. Wright hates himself.it also says,"The son of man must suffer many". And that he will make your enemies your footstool.So where did all of the hatered,and backlash,come from??this is no church that i would want to go to.My pastors name is Wright,and i wish that it could be spelled different,because she teaches love,forgiveness,and the things of god.But when she teaches,you can feel the love of god in her,and she hates NO man. God is what rules her heart,and she teaches her members the same.Yes i am a black rich woman. Not because i say so,but because GOD says so.Obama if you ever read this. keep praying and asking God what to do,and he will guide your footsteps.
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