Santorum denies calling Obama the n-word

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The Internet was buzzing on Friday morning that Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum may have almost dropped the n-bomb on President Barack Obama.

Speaking to a group of voters in Janesville, Wisconsin on Wednesday, the candidate seemed to catch himself before using a word that sounds like “n*gger” to describe the president. (The original video of the speech is available here. The remarks in question take place at about 34:50.)

“We know the candidate Barack Obama, what he was like – the anti-war government nig… America was a source for division around the world, that what we were doing was wrong,” Santorum said.

“Oh, come on!” Santorum spokesman Hogan Gidley told Raw Story when asked for comment. “Give me a break. That’s unbelievable. What does it say about those that are running with this story that that’s where their mind goes. You know, I’m not going to dignify that with [a response].”

“That is absolutely ridiculous.”

In January, the former Pennsylvania senator was caught on video telling a crowd in Iowa that he didn’t “want to make black people’s lives better by giving them other people’s money.”

But he later told Fox News host Bill O’Reilly that everyone misheard his comments.

“I looked at that [video] and I didn’t say that,” the candidate asserted. “What I started to say was a word and then it sort of changed and ‘blah’ came out. And people said I said ‘black’ and I didn’t.”

“I don’t use the term ‘black’ very often,” Santorum insisted. “I use the term ‘African American’ more than I use ‘black.’ And I as someone who did more work for historically black colleges, I used to — every year I used to bring all the historically black colleges into Washington, D.C. to try to help them.”

Watch a clip of Santorum’s comments below, first uploaded to YouTube on March 29, 2012.