Senate Majority Leader and totally lovable Harry Reid has apologized for making a few offensive (and lame) asian jokes at an Asian Chamber of Commerce event Thursday.
“My comments were in extremely poor taste and I apologize,” Sen. Reid said in a statement to TIME. “Sometimes I say the wrong thing.” (RELATED: Harry Reid Jokes About Asians)
Here are just a few of those times Reid has said “the wrong thing.”
1. Reid referred to Barack Obama as “light-skinned” and without a “Negro dialect,” in 2008, and said those two factors would help Obama’s then presidential bid. His comments were reported in the book “Game Changer,” in 2010, and he eventually apologized for his remarks. “I deeply regret using such a poor choice of words,” Reid said. (RELATED: Reid Condemns Rancher For Racist Comments)
2. In 2008, Reid explained his relief that the Capitol Visitor Center was completed, because he would no longer have to “smell the tourists” on hot days. “My staff has always said, ‘Don’t say this,’ but I’m going to say it again because it’s so descriptive, because it’s true,” he said at the dedication. “In the summertime, because (of) the high humidity and how hot it gets here, you could literally smell the tourists coming into the Capitol.”
3. As the healthcare debate was raging in 2009, Reid told a Nevada newspaper Democratic Sen. Ted Kennedy’s then recent death would help the Democrats’ cause. “I think [Kennedy] will be a help. He’s an inspiration for us. [Healthcare] was the issue of his life and he didn’t get it done.”
4. During the 2012 presidential campaign, Reid accused GOP candidate Mitt Romney of not paying taxes, because Romney hadn’t released his tax returns. “He didn’t pay taxes for 10 years!” he told the Huffington Post. “Now, do I know that that’s true? Well, I’m not certain. But obviously he can’t release those tax returns. How would it look?” The claim was based on an anonymous source, and turned out to be completely unfounded. (RELATED: The Source Of Harry Reid’s Lie)
5. While campaigning in Nevada in 2010, Reid spoke incredulously of Hispanic Republicans. “I don’t know how anyone of Hispanic heritage could be a Republican, okay,” he said to an audience full of Hispanic voters. “Do I need to say more?”
6. Following the Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision this month, which allows Hobby Lobby and other for-profit businesses to avoid providing employees certain contraceptives on religious grounds, Reid let it slip that he thinks Justice Clarence Thomas is white. “This Hobby Lobby decision is outrageous, and we’re going to do something about it,” Reid told reporters following the ruling. He said the Senate would act to “ensure that women’s lives are not determined by virtue of five white men.” But Thomas, one of the five justices who sided with Hobby Lobby, is black. Whoops. (RELATED: Harry Reid Slammed By Hometown Paper For Racebaiting)
7. In a 2013 speech at his annual energy conference, Reid referred to town-hall protesters angry about Obamacare as “evil-mongers,” who use “lies, innuendo and rumor” to end debate. He then doubled down on his remarks in an interview with Politics Daily. “It was an original with me. I maybe could have been less descriptive,” he said, then added that “I feel like I haven’t done anything to embarrass them. Except maybe call somebody an evil-monger.”
8. In February, Reid declared all the Obamacare horror stories ever told untrue, and accused Republicans of using false stories for political gain. “There’s plenty of horror stories being told. All of them are untrue, but they’re being told all over America,” he said on the Senate floor. “We heard about the evils of Obamacare, about the lifes its ruining in Republican stump speeches, and in ads paid for by oil magntes, the Koch brothers,” he added. “But then those tales turned out to be just that. Tales. Stories made up from whole cloth. Lies distorted by Republicans to grab headlines or make political advertisements.”
But just a month later, after another Senator called him out several times for lying, Reid denied he ever said a word on the Senate floor about the examples Republicans gave. “I have never come to the floor, to my recollection, I never said a word about any of the examples that Republicans have given regarding Obamacare and how, how it’s not very good.” (RELATED: Harry Reid Lies About His Lies About Obamacare)
9. In August last year, Reid declared the Tea Party the new anarchist movement. “You know, some say that’s what started World War I, the anarchy movement — but they were violent. They did damage to property and they did physical damage to people,” he said in an interview on KNPR. “The modern anarchists don’t do that — that’s the tea party,” Reid clarified. “But they have the same philosophy as the early anarchists: They do not believe in government. Anytime something bad happens to government, that’s a victory for them. And that’s what happened. We have absolute gridlock created by a group of people who represent few Americans. But it makes it extremely difficult to get things done.”