Bill Clinton Tapes Comment That Obama Campaign "Played Race Card," Then Denies He Said It

In an apparent continuing exegesis of "what the meaning of is is," Bill Clinton told WHYY radio's Susan Phillips that the Obama campaign had "played the race card" against him after Clinton compared Barack Obama to Jesse Jackson after Obama won the South Carolina primary, and then denied saying it. The next day an NBC/NJ reporter asked Clinton what he meant by the remark, to which Clinton responded:

That’s not what I said. You always follow me around and play these little games, and I’m not going to play your games today. This is a day about election day. Go back and see what the question was, and what my answer was. You have mischaracterized it to get another cheap story to divert the American people from the real urgent issues before us, and I choose not to play your game today.

The verbatim account of the radio interview is as follows. Referring to Clinton's comparison of Obama and Jackson:

INTERVIEWER (RE: Jackson comment): "Do you think that was a mistake, and would you do that again?"

CLINTON: "No. I think that they played the race card on me. And we now know, from memos from the campaign and everything, that they planned to do it along."

Audio here.