| | Rice 'angry' over racial charges against Bush after Katrina
 Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told hosts of ABC's The View Thursday that she was angry with critics who charged that President Bush didn't help victims of Katrina because they were black.
"What really did make me angry was the implication that some people made that somehow President Bush allowed this to happen because these people were black," Rice said. "And For somebody to say that about the President of the United States, a President of the United States who I know well and a President of the United States who is my friend, I was appalled and I couldn't believe people didn't challenge it."
"Well, that was probably wrong," The View's Joy Behar responded.
Rice said, "Oh, absolutely."
"But he did say 'heck of a job, Brownie,' which really angered a lot of people because it was not a good job that they did," Behar said, referring to former FEMA head Michael D. Brown, who many say was unqualified for the job he apparently received as a political favor.
Rice sounded more apologetic about the federal response than Bush did in his final week when he defended it.
"I think at the time they probably thought things were going better than they were," Rice said. "People make mistakes under stressful situations. I believe we'll do better and the United States will do better the next time around, but I think Katrina was probably, for my mind, one of the greatest disasters for the administration and for the country."
During an appearance at a televised hurricane relief concert soon after Katrina hit, rapper Kanye West said, "George Bush doesn't care about black people."
West was standing next to comedy actor Michael Myers then, so it's unclear if Rice thought the Canadian film star should have been one to "challenge" such statements. But many others did at the time, and still do.
View host Barbara Walters joked later in the broadcast after Rice wouldn't reveal if she voted for Obama, "She didn't say yes, she didn't say no."
This video is from ABC's The View, broadcast Jan. 29, 2009.
Download video via RawReplay.com
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