Herman Cain: Libya Gaffe Was 'Embarrassing'
GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain on Monday admitted that his high-profile stumble on Libya earlier this month was "embarrassing."
"Was it embarrassing? Yes. Was I caught off guard? Yes, because of a number of factors. That was a 40-minute interview and they pulled out 40 seconds to embarrass me -- and they did." Cain said in an interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer in which he also got out in front of an upcoming story regarding another woman who is claiming to have been "involved in a very inappropriate" relationship with him.
"But that doesn't mean that I did not know the answer," Cain continued. "What I was doing was gathering my thoughts so I wouldn't state anything incorrectly. No one has said I said something wrong. They just questioned the pause and the fact that yeah, I was exhausted."
During an interview with the editorial board of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel in November, Cain struggled to explain his disagreement with President Obama over his foreign policy decisions regarding Libya. The clip quickly went viral and fueled criticism that the political novice had an insufficient grasp on foreign affairs.
Cain spokesman J.D. Gordon later tried to downplay the incident, saying that the video was "taken out of context" and claiming that Cain was running "on four hours of sleep."
Days later, however, Cain appeared to get tripped up again while clarifying his stance on Libya when he suggested that elements of the Taliban, which maintains strongholds thousands of miles away in Afghanistan and Pakistan, were getting involved in the nation's interim government.
Video above via ThinkProgress.
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Posted: 11/28/2011 4:53 pm