Obama tells Roland Martin: Harry Reid on "right side of history"

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WASHINGTON–President Obama was interviewed Monday by Chicago’s Roland Martin, for his new show, Washington Watch with Roland Martin. In the interview, to be played on the upcoming Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, Obama said embattled Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nv.) was a “good man” when asked about him calling him–during the 2008 campaign–a “light-skinned” African American “with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one.” The comments came in the book about the 2008 presidential season, “Game Change.”

Said Obama, in a segment broadcast Monday said, “For him to have used some inartful language in trying to praise me, and for people to try to make hay out of that, makes absolutely no sense. …This is a good man who has always been on the right side of history.”