On Thursday morning, republican candidate Mitt Romney, appeared on the radio show of Fox host Brian Kilmeade to respond to a report about his time spent as a prankster and as a bully of closeted gay students while in prep-school.
“They talk about the fact that I played a lot of pranks in high school,” Romney said. “And they describe some that you just say to yourself, back in high school I just did some dumb things and if anybody was hurt by that or offended by it, obviously I apologize.”
“I participated in a lot of hijinks and pranks during high school and some might have gone too far and for that, I apologize,” he added.
Romney said during the interview on the radio show that what he was apologizing for teen discretions. It was reported in a newspaper that Romney pinned a closeted gay classmate to the ground and cut his long hair while in school. Romney also said that he was ‘not going to be too concerned’ about the issue. He also stressed that he was raised in a tolerant environment and that the pranks he committed were not towards gays in a discriminatory matter.
“The people involved didn’t come out of the closet until years later,” he noted. “The idea that this is something that was known by me … is obviously absurd. I had no idea that this person might have been gay.”
“I don’t remember that incident and I’ll tell you I certainly don’t believe that I, I can’t speak for other people of course, thought the fellow was homosexual,” he said. “That was the furthest thing from my mind back in the 1960s, so that was not the case. But as to pranks that were played back then, I don’t remember them all, but again, high school days, if I did stupid things, why I’m afraid I got to say sorry for it.”
