Obama: "From here on, I do not expect those views to be attributed to me." [View All]

[seafan]

Obama says he's 'outraged' with pastor's comments

(CNN) — In his harshest criticism yet of his former minister, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama said he was “outraged” by Wright’s comments at the National Press Club Monday, and “saddened by the spectacle.”

“I have been a member of Trinity Church since 1992. I have known Rev. Wright for almost 20 years,” he said at a Winston-Salem, North Carolina press conference Tuesday. “The person I saw yesterday is not the person I met 20 years ago.”

Obama said he was outraged by Wright’s remarks that seemed to suggest the U.S. government might be responsible for the spread of AIDS in the black community, and his equation of some American wartime efforts with terrorism. And he seemed to signal a complete break with his former minister.

“What particularly angered me was his suggestion somehow that my previous denunciation of his remarks were somehow political posturing,” said Obama, who added that Wright had shown “little regard for me” and seemed more concerned with “taking center stage.”

“It was antithetical to our campaign, it was antithetical to what we’re about,” he said. “I cannot prevent him from making these remarks” but “when I say I find these comments appalling I mean it. It contradicts what I’m about and who I am… it is completely opposed to what I stand for and where I want to take this country.”

In a break with previous comments, Obama focused his criticism on Wright the man, and not simply his remarks. “I gave him the benefit of the doubt before my speech in Philadelphia” where he addressed the subject of race. But “what we saw yesterday from Rev. Wright was a resurfacing and I believe an exploitation of these old divisions.”

He said he had not spoken with Wright since the minister’s Monday speech, though he would not rule out a conversation with him in the future. And he defended his membership in Wright’s congregation. “I did not vet my pastor before I decided to run for the presidency.”

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"The Republican Party in North Carolina is running Wright ads. They are using Reverend Wright as an assault weapon against Barack Obama." ----Elizabeth Edwards in an interview with Norah O'Donnell on MSNBC at 3:05 pm EDT, April 29, 2008