New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton are defending a racially themed joke at a recent charity dinner.
At Saturday night’s Inner Circle dinner, a black-tie function involving New York’s political press corps, de Blasio and Clinton appeared together onstage in a skit involving a joke that some critics considered racially offensive, Fox News reported. RELATED:Rob Thomas is really, really sorry about racist joke in Australia The dialogue began with Clinton thanking de Blasio for endorsing her candidacy but pointing out that he did so later than other prominent politicians, the Daily Mail stated. In response, de Blasio said he was “running on C.P. time,” making reference to “colored people time,” a racist stereotype concerning lack of punctuality among African-Americans. After that exchange, Clinton delivered a punch line indicating what “C.P.” supposedly meant: “Cautious politician time. I’ve been there,” she was quoted by Fox News.
“It was clearly a staged show. It was a scripted show and the whole idea was to do the counterintuitive and say ‘cautious politician time,'” de Blasio was quoted by Fox News from a Monday night appearance on CNN in which he defended the skit.
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Approximately 100 charities received proceeds from the Inner Circle dinner, which took place at the Hilton Midtown in New York.
