Republican presidential candidate Chris Christie called Maine Gov. Paul LePage’s racially charged remarks this past week “offensive,” but said the governor’s apology should be accepted, NBC News reported Saturday afternoon.

“It doesn’t change a bit for me my affection for him, my respect for him, as a leader and as a person, and he’s a good man. And he’s apologized,” the New Jersey governor said in an interview that will air Monday morning on the MSNBC show “Morning Joe,” NBC reported.

On Wednesday at a town hall meeting in Bridgton, LePage said out-of-state drug dealers were selling heroin in Maine, and “half the time” before they leave impregnate “a young white woman.” LePage has said he should have said “Maine women.”

LePage endorsed Christie’s run for president last year, shortly after the New Jersey governor entered the race. Democrats have called on Christie to repudiate LePage’s remarks and possibly renounce the endorsement.

In the interview, NBC reported, Christie said people shouldn’t be judged “by one set of remarks they make” and that LePage’s apology, issued Friday, was genuine.

However, LePage admitted only to making “one slip-up” during the remarks and blamed the news media for suggesting that the comment was racially charged.

In the interview, NBC said, Christie admitted that LePage sometimes makes blunt remarks that cause controversy.

“We all know that he shoots from the hip, and when he does that there are going to be times when even he, in retrospect, thinks he shouldn’t have said,” Christie said, according to the network. “Every one of us, me, and everybody else who’s in public life says things at times they wish they could take back.”

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