Former Politico reporter Joe Williams defends Romney comment

Former Politico White House correspondent Joe Williams on Sunday said it was not biased to claim Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney was more comfortable around "white folks."

"It's something that was very much proven, something that seems obvious to everyone," he told CNN's Howard Kurtz. "And a lot of people who I talked with about my suspension said,'Well, we don't understand what the big deal was. This is something we have observed. This is something other people reported.' This is something my own paper had reported."

Politico suspended Williams in June after conservative websites Washington Free Beacon and Breitbart.com criticized him for comments made during an appearance on MSNBC. During the appearance, Williams claimed that Romney was more comfortable "with people who are like him" like the "white folks" at Fox & Friends and had trouble relating to others.

"I would say it's an artfully phrased thing to say," Williams said on CNN. "I don't think it was anything that was revelatory or anything that was slanderous. I think it was probably artfully put and that drew the most attention to it."

Williams has previously said the conservative websites that criticized him were "in the business of gathering scalps."

"I think a lot of reasons why this has gotten big press is because of the diversity problem we have in an era with a president who doesn't look like all the others, and the fact that in the right wing media, diversity and race issues are the favorite chew toy," he told Kurtz. "They love to go at this stuff. And I just happened to provide them a good opportunity to do that."

Watch video, courtesy of CNN, below: