President Obama Calls Kanye West a 'Jackass' Off the Record

While conducting an off-the-record interview with CNBC on Monday, U.S. President Barack Obama gave his reaction to Kanye West interrupting the MTV Video Music Awards on Sunday night, calling the 32-year-old rapper a "jackass".

Terry Moran, a reporter with ABC, was watching the CNBC interview with President Obama being recorded when he heard the president refer to Kanye West, who interrupted the awards during a performance by winner Taylor Swift, as a "jackass". See the embedded video above for a video clip of the remark. As the London Times reports, Moran, co-anchor on Nightline, was fully aware that an agreement not to make public remarks made by the President during an off-the-record segment of the interview existed. However the reporter could not resist tweeting what he had heard and wrote:

Pres. Obama just called Kanye West a 'jackass' for his outburst at VMAs when Taylor Swift won. Now THAT'S presidential

Realizing his error Mr Moran deleted his tweet, but many of his followers on Twitter, said to number one million, had seen the tweet and duly re-tweeted.

White House Photo by Pete Souza

President Obama speaking to an audience

image:57029:5::0

The situation caused extreme embarrassment to ABC and a spokesperson for the network was forced to issue an apology. Politico carries full details of the apology, which read:

In the process of reporting on remarks by President Obama that were made during a CNBC interview, ABC News employees prematurely tweeted a portion of those remarks that turned out to be from an off-the-record portion of the interview. This was done before our editorial process had been completed. That was wrong. We apologize to the White House and CNBC and are taking steps to ensure that it will not happen again

Politico states that the White House made no immediate response concerning either the incident at the CNBC studios or the subsequent apology. Kanye West has also had plenty of apologizing to do and when he appeared on The Jay Leno Show on NBC on Monday night he expressed again his regret at his actions. The New York Daily News reports that the rapper, no stranger to controversy, told Jay Leno:

It was rude, period....I'm just ashamed that my hurt caused someone else's hurt. I need to, after this, take some time off and just analyze how I'm going to make it through the rest of this life, how I'm going to improve. If there's anything I could do to help Taylor in the future or help anyone, I'd like [to]

Responding to Leno's question as to how his late mother Donda would have reacted to his uninvited presence on stage on Sunday, West admitted that she would have scolded him. Leno's question was said to have caused West, known to have been very close to his mother, to fall silent for quite some time before giving his host an answer. Taylor Swift was due to have appeared on the ABC show The View on Tuesday morning to give her reaction to Sunday's incident and the apologies that have followed from Kanye West.