Huffington Post

During an appearance on Fox News' "Hannity" on Wednesday night, Sarah Palin suggested that David Gregory, host of NBC's "Meet the Press," asked a "racist-tinged question" in pressing presidential candidate Newt Gingrich on an eyebrow-raising characterization of President Barack Obama he made last week.

The former House Speaker criticized the president as "the most successful food stamp president in modern American history" while speaking in Georgia. Here's an excerpt of the exchange that went down between Gingrich and Gregory after a clip was played of the remarks:

GREGORY: First of all, you gave a speech in Georgia with language a lot of people think could be coded racially-tinged language, calling the president, the first black president, a food stamp president.

GINGRICH: Oh, come on, David.

GREGORY: What did you mean? What was the point?

GINGRICH: That's, that's bizarre. That -- this kind of automatic reference to racism, this is the president of the United States. The president of the United States has to be held accountable. Now, the idea that -- and what I said is factually true. Forty-seven million Americans are on food stamps. One out of every six Americans is on food stamps. And to hide behind the charge of racism? I have -- I have never said anything about President Obama which is racist.

GREGORY: Well, what did you mean?

GINGRICH: Well, it's very simple. He has policies -- and I used a very direct analogy. He follows the same destructive political model that destroyed the city of Detroit. I follow the model that Rick Perry and others have used to create more jobs in Texas. You know, Texas two out of the last four years created more jobs than the other 49 states combined. I'm suggesting we know how to create jobs. Ronald Reagan did it. I was part of that. We know how to create jobs. We did it when I was speaker. And, and the way you create jobs is you have lower taxes, you have less regulation, you have litigation reform. When the New York Stock Exchange puts its headquarters at Amsterdam, Holland and, by the way, follows 40 other companies in the last year; when General Electric pays zero in taxes; there's something fundamentally wrong with the current system. The Obama system of the National Labor Relations Board basically breaking the law to try to punish Boeing and to threaten every right-to-work state. The Environmental Protection Agency trying to control the entire American economy by bureaucratic fiat. The Obama system's going to lead us down the path to Detroit and destruction. I think we need a brand-new path. It's a path of job creation. And one of the central themes of this campaign is going to be paychecks vs. food stamps.

"Well, talk about racism, that was a racist-tingest question from David Gregory," said Palin of the exchange. "He made it sound like if you're black you're on food stamps and the president is referring to you as being on food stamps. I think that's racist. And, you know, enough is enough of this calling out, this racism, these false charges."

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