Obama Calls Kanye a “Jackass,” Kanye Apologizes on Leno [Update: Obama Audio Surfaces]

Kanye West says he needs to take some time off after his now infamous VMA outburst that has reportedly caused President Obama to call the rapper a “jackass.”

During an interview Monday on CNBC, President Obama called the rapper/producer a “jackass” for his outburst at the MTV Video Music Awards during Taylor Swift’s award speech, which resulted in his being booted out the building.

Though the president reportedly made the comment off-the-record, Terry Moran, a Nightline co-anchor, posted the comment on Twitter.

ABC has since apologized for the remark making it’s way live.

“In the process of reporting on remarks by President Obama that were made during a CNBC interview, ABC News employees prematurely tweeted a portion of those remarks that turned out to be from an off-the-record portion of the interview.

“This was done before our editorial process had been completed. That was wrong. We apologize to the White House and CNBC and are taking steps to ensure that it will not happen again.”

Meanwhile, the disgraced rapper/producer appeared on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno last night, and decided to apologize, a third time, for the incident.

Leno asked ‘Ye, “I was fortunate enough to meet your mom, what do you think she would have said about this?”

After a long, emotional pause, West said, “I deal with hurt. And so many celebrities, they never took the time off, and I never taken the time off, you know, just music after music and tour after tour and tour, and I’m just ashamed that my hurt caused somebody else’s hurt… and I don’t try to justify it because I was just in the wrong, that’s period, but I need to, after this, just take some time off and just analyze how I’m going to make it through the rest of this life, how I’m going to improve. Because I am a celebrity and that’s something I have to deal with. And if it’s anything I can do to help Taylor in the future, or help anyone, I’d like– cause you know, I want to live this thing hard.” –Linda Hobbs