Rick Sanchez On 'Good Morning America': 'I Screwed Up,' Comments Were Offensive (VIDEO)

Rick Sanchez gave his first interview following his firing from CNN to ABC's "Good Morning America" on Friday--and the former anchor didn't waste any time apologizing for his comments about Jon Stewart and Jews.

"I screwed up," he told "GMA" co-host George Stephanopoulos.

Stephanopoulos asked him what had led him to call Stewart a "bigot" and say everyone who ran CNN was "a lot like" the "Daily Show" host on a Sirius XM satellite radio show last week. Sanchez blamed the scandal on fatigue:

"I was tired, I'd been working fourteen hour days for like two-and-a-half months, I was doing three shows, I was exhausted, it was right after the show, my daughter had a softball game I desperately wanted to go to, and I was a little impatient. I said some things I shouldn't have said. They were wrong. Not only were they wrong, they were offensive."

WATCH:

Sanchez stressed that his comments were not meant to be anti-Semitic, but said he went into the interview "with a chip on my shoulder" about the fact that no people of color were hosting prime time cable news shows.

"I was feeling a little bit put out, and I was feeling a little sensitve, and I was looking at the landscape...and I externalized the problem and I put it on Jon Stewart's shoulders, and I was wrong to do that," he said, though he also admitted that he felt Stewart had essentially called him stupid when he mocked him on "The Daily Show."

The interview capped off a week of contrition from Sanchez. On Wednesday, he released a statement saying that he had apologized to Stewart personally in a telephone call.

Comments

[Fred303]

02:02 PM on 10/13/2010

Speak the truth, lose your job. This is the way America ends.

[EF3]

12:27 PM on 10/13/2010

"I screwed up".

Gee Rick, yuh think?!!

[truthisneeded]

09:56 AM on 10/13/2010

too funny! i mentioned 4 or 5 days ago on this website to boycott ibm, cisco, xerox because they are heavy CNN advertisers. These companies enable CNN infotaintmnet network that brings us propaganda, discrimination and lewd behavior from his anchors (client 9 use of prostitutes)

Guess what happened in the last couple of days, CNN, IBM, Xerox have been running ads like crazy on the HuffPo; interesting coincidence. Companies trying to suppress the truth by trying to buy journalists. Hope that the HuffingtonPost does not lose its journalistic integrity.

Have a good day everyone.

truthisneeded
http://yfrog.com/62sanchezcnnj

[dessertsfirst]

10:26 PM on 10/12/2010

Gee, Rick, ya think??

[OldCowboy]

09:00 PM on 10/12/2010

Rick screwed up. Really?

[SonyaInTx]

02:01 PM on 10/12/2010

In this interview, Rick keeps digging that hole....

[chicagoexpat]

02:00 AM on 10/12/2010

I looked back on the comments to this article to see if it changed from so many anti-semitic supporters

but they haven't stopped, they've only slowed down

I guess they won't be happy until some jews get trashed somewhere for being jewish

[fuzzyhearts]

08:44 PM on 10/11/2010

Sanchez is a tool. But the thing that hits me is that he calls the POTUS a "cotton picking President" and nothing happened to him. And no one cares. He says Jews run cable TV and he gets fired. Hilarious.

[carnitine]

11:30 PM on 10/11/2010

Cotton Pickin is not racist, if you don't live below the mason-dixon line you probably wouldnt know that. The only tool is John Stewart.

[Janis Alanis Zingaro]

01:58 AM on 10/12/2010

If you call a black man a Cotton Pickin President, it is definitely racist. I live well below the line.
Enough to know that a lot of people still use the n word and claim that its not racist. It is. Still.
Still.

[truthisneeded]

01:02 PM on 10/11/2010

Bewkes, Jautz, Walton and Kent, are the same dudes who brought you Eliot Spitzer.

Mr Spitzer's wife, Silda, is sticking with her Harvard Law School sweethart too despite his adultery, emotional and constructive abandonment of his wife, and it is cruel and inhuman treatment of his wife.

$4200 per hour call girls in the Mayflower Hotel in Washington...

C N N

http://www.divorcesaloon.com/archives/15928

"C lient N umber N ine.....Seth Meyers SNL"”

[truthisneeded]

11:40 AM on 10/11/2010

http://search.yahoo.com/search?cs=bz&p=Rick+Sanchez&fr=fp-tts-701&fr2=ps

[truthisneeded]

11:12 AM on 10/11/2010

Inartful lol

[truthisneeded]

11:12 AM on 10/11/2010

Let s stop talking about Rick Sanchez and lets start talking about
Time Warner CNN's corporate oppressive censorship of its journalists and CNN's propaganda

[KRYSTY]

07:45 AM on 10/11/2010

Can we move on from talking about Sanchez? Huffpo have given him more attention than he deserves.

[truthisneeded]

10:01 AM on 10/11/2010

yes and all this made up non-sense that he should have been fired and that is comments were anti-semitic

[chicagoexpat]

01:52 AM on 10/12/2010

yes, the nonsense anti-semites like Dick and that of his adoring fans -- who seem to accept anti-semitism as fine

seen any good Mel Gibson movies lately?

[ItchyMac]

03:16 AM on 10/11/2010

I'm sorry, but my brain doesn't automatically start thinking about people in terms of their ethnicity when I am fatigued. And, as the EDT time stamp on this post proves, I am a SERIOUS insomniac! It's 3:15 AM here on the east coast right now.

Besides I tried to watch his show a few times, and, if memory serves, he did a fair amount of mocking himself.

[siljerjo]

07:20 AM on 10/11/2010

I know. Since when does being anxious to be somewhere else promt generalizations on ethnicity and race?

I don't necessarily think Rick deserved all the backlash he's been getting, but what he said was wrong, and why not just apologize and say what you said was inexcusable. These half-apologies aren't cutting it.

[armorm2]

11:04 AM on 10/11/2010

you ever tried working 14 hour days for over 2 months? I'd be speaking a new language after that

[AlaskanWannaB]

11:41 AM on 10/11/2010

I worked 14 hours days for a period of a year and half...and it nearly killed me. Six months later, I was diagnosed with a serious illness. I was under a lot of stress, too. Folks, learn to balance like with work and some fun...or otherwise...you may end up like me. I worked long hours for 28 years. Work was my life....but in the end....the stress of it will kill you. Balance your life with fun and family.

[truthisneeded]

02:35 AM on 10/11/2010

Rick Sanchez according to CNN

http://yfrog.com/62sanchezcnnj