Hillary Clinton blamed Mayor de Blasio for the racially charged joke at the center of a skit they performed over the weekend, as the uproar over the blunder continued Tuesday.
“The mayor addressed his skit last night and said he intended to mock only himself and not offend anyone,” Clinton said in a statement.
De Blasio had said he didn’t mean to offend anyone in the skit at the annual Inner Circle show, in which he claimed his late endorsement of Clinton was the result of “C.P. time,” which he defined as cautious politician time.”
It’s a riff on the derogatory “colored people time,” which means always late.
“It’s a satire. The whole show was a satire,” de Blasio told MSNBC Tuesday. “I was mocking myself. I’m sorry, I just think — look, I take full responsibility. Someone else wrote the script, but I approved it.”
Many people weren’t laughing.
Hillary Clinton joins Mayor de Blasio as a surprise guest during the annual Inner Circle Show in New York.
“It was an unforced error, and it was one that you simply don’t do,” said Roland Martin, a TV and radio host and political pundit.
Martin, who is black, said the dud joke was the topic of his nationally syndicated radio show and eight out of 10 callers thought “it was just dumb.”
Civil rights leader Bertha Lewis, an ally of de Blasio’s and a Clinton supporter, also called out the two top Democrats.
“You just stuck your foot in it again,” said Lewis, who is black. “What you say, when you say it, to whom you say it, and where you say it makes a difference.”
Others defended the joke.