President-elect Joe Biden’s incoming Deputy Chief of Staff Jen O’Malley Dillon acknowledged that she could have used different words to describe Republicans in an interview with Glamour magazine, but she did not apologize for the controversial statement.
“I used some words that I probably could have chosen better,” Jen O’Malley Dillon said, addressing the controversy during a virtual event with her former communications firm Precision Strategies about the election
O’Malley Dillon angered Republicans after she described Republicans as a “bunch of fuckers,” during a conversation about how the Biden administration would still try to work with them to move the country forward.
“In the primary, people would mock him, like, ‘You think you can work with Republicans?’” O’Malley Dillon said, according to Politico. “I’m not saying they’re not a bunch of f—ers. Mitch McConnell is terrible. But this sense that you couldn’t wish for that, you couldn’t wish for this bipartisan ideal? He rejected that.”
Axios reporter Jonathan Swan noted Thursday that some advisers close to Biden were not pleased with the comment and wanted her to apologize.
O’Malley Dillon was interviewed about the controversy by former Obama director of digital strategy Teddy Goff and Stephanie Cutter, a former deputy campaign manager for Obama–both of whom helped found Precision Strategies.
Cutter previously defended the comment on Twitter, sharing failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s take that Republicans had no right to be offended by the comment after supporting President Donald Trump.
O’Malley Dillon indicated that she was misunderstood in the interview with her former co-workers, telling viewers that “the point that I was really making” was that people supported Biden because he stood for the belief that Republicans and Democrats could come together and get things done.
The Biden campaign did not respond to a question from Breitbart News as to whether there would be any consequences for Dillon’s comment or what words she would have chosen to describe Republicans instead.