Mitt Romney went on Fox News on Sunday morning and took a conciliatory tone, saying he is ready to move on and he has forgiven MSNBC host Melissa Harris-Perry for a panel that made jokes about the former presidential candidate’s adopted black grandson. A day earlier, Harris-Perry began her show with a tearful apology. “I recognize that people make mistakes and the folks at MSNBC made a big mistake,” Romney said. “They’ve apologized for it. That’s all you can ask for. I am going to move on from that. I am sure they want to move on from it.”
The year-in-review segment, which proved that “Fox News isn’t the only network that can turn inane holiday banter into a racial controversy,” as New York put it at the time, involved a panel of comedians trying to put humorous captions to photos from 2013. Harris-Perry showed the Romney’s annual Christmas photo and the panel immediately seized on the newly adopted grandson that Romney was holding. “One of these things is not like the other,” sang one of the panelists. Another joked it was an example of the lack of diversity in the GOP.
“Whatever the intent was, the reality is that the segment proceeded in a way that was offensive, and showing the photo in that context, of that segment, was poor judgment,” Harris-Perry said at the top of her show Saturday. “So without reservation or qualification, I apologize to the Romney family.” Romney seemed to be satisfied with that: “I think it’s a heartfelt apology, and I think for that reason we hold no ill will whatsoever.”
Watch video of the controversial segment and the subsequent apology after the jump.
