Henry Louis "Skip" Gates gave his first reaction to Obama's comments on his arrest during an interview with Gayle King on Sirius/XM radio.
Gates was eating dinner during the press conference when a friend called to inform him that Obama had commented on the arrest:
all of a sudden I thought my blackberry was going to explode... I said oh my goodness what did he say... 'I have to wait for the facts...?'...and he said no he said 'the Cambridge Police were stupid and that you were friends'...I went..my god. And then the emails...it was like a slot machine. I got 500 emails last night.
King said she was surprised at Obama's choice of words, saying the police had acted "stupidly." Gates replied, "I think that the circumstances are so egregious...that...it was the adjective that...logically popped into his head."
Listen to an excerpt of the interview below. The whole interview can be heard here.
GAYLE KING: ...did you happen to be watching the news conference when he said that?
HENRY LOUIS GATES, JR: ...I was having dinner with a friend on the upper east side in a little private Italian restaurant and all of a sudden I thought my blackberry was going to explode. And the first call...it was from Angela...Angela DeLeon...[saying] Barack Obama just mentioned you in his news conference...
I said oh my goodness what did he say... 'I have to wait for the facts...?'...and he said no he said 'the Cambridge Police were stupid and that you were friends'...I went..my god. And then the emails...it was like a slot machine. I got 500 emails last night.
GAYLE KING: I was surprised by his choice of words..that he said the Cambridge Police acted 'stupidly.' I agree with him, but I was surprised that the President of the United States would use that particular phrase.
HENRY LOUIS GATES, JR: I think that the circumstances are so egregious...that...it was the adjective that...logically popped into his head. I haven't listened to a lot of the commentary but the people who want to protect the police and who are afraid of criminals like I'm afraid of criminals...are looking for something that I could have done to justify Sergeant Crowley's actions. There's nothing that I could have done to justify Sergeant Crowley's action.