Obama: Wright ‘Made a Caricature of Himself’

Barack Obama, speaking today in Winston-Salem, made his strongest denunciation yet of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, the Journal‘s Michael Hewlett reports. Obama said he was outraged at the comments that Wright made Monday at the National Press Club. “Yesterday he made a caricature of himself,” Obama said. He added that his relationship with Wright, who used to be Obama’s pastor, is greatly damaged.

Wright, and by extension Obama, has been criticized for weeks after revelations of sermons that Wright gave in which he expressed vitriolic anti-American sentiment. In a major speech in Philadelphia last month, Obama said he deplored Wright’s controversial remarks but said he could not “disown” him as a person. Over the weekend, Wright re-entered the fray in several public appearances, in which he aggressively defended himself and suggested that Obama was trying to distance himself from Wright simply for political reasons.

Obama’s comments today came during a press conference that followed a rally at the Joel Coliseum Annex. At the rally, Obama continued his intensified outreach toward working-class voters. Go here for the full write-up.