President Obama, who I would wager is the only head of state who can do the “Single Ladies” signature hand move, supposedly called Kanye West a “jackass” for his now infamous interruption of Taylor Swift’s “best female video” acceptance speech at Sunday’s VMAs. Obama made the remark off the record during an interview with CNBC, and ABC news anchor Terry Moran of Nightline Tweeted the news to his million followers that “Pres. Obama just called Kanye West a ‘jackass’ for his outburst at VMAs when Taylor Swift won. Now THAT’S presidential.” Moran quickly deleted that Tweet when CNBC officials reminded him that Obama’s statement against Kanye was made off the record. You can’t ever delete a tweet, though, there are services that archive them, they still show up in Twitter searches for days, and if you have any followers they’ll remember.

ABC has apologized to both CNBC and The President for Moran’s tweet.

President Obama called musician Kanye West a “jackass” during an interview Monday with CNBC, an ABC News anchor reported to his followers on Twitter. But the tweet caused some red faces at ABC, and the network soon apologized for publicizing what had apparently been an off-the-record comment.

“Pres. Obama just called Kanye West a ‘jackass’ for his outburst at VMAs when Taylor Swift won. Now THAT’S presidential,” “Nightline” co-anchor Terry Moran wrote Monday evening. Moran has more than 1 million followers on the microblogging service.

CNBC objected to the post, which was apparently from a portion of the interview that was supposed to be off the record. Moran quickly deleted the comment (although it still can be accessed online), and an ABC spokesperson apologized for the tweet in a statement first posted on Politico.

Moran “prematurely tweeted … 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,” the spokesperson said.

The president was apparently responding to West’s interruption of Taylor Swift after she won an award at the MTV Video Music Awards on Sunday. West took the microphone from Swift to proclaim that Beyonce had a better video than she did.

West later apologized for his actions.

[From The Washington Post]

We’ll be covering Kanye’s tearful interview on the premiere of Jay Leno’s revamped show shortly, but it’s worth noting that this incident is the most press Kanye’s received in years. The Washington Post asks if it was a staged ploy to drum up interest in Kanye’s tour, a suspicion that MTV’s spokesperson denies, saying “It was absolutely not staged.” It was staged by Kanye though for sure, even if it was a drunken last minute decision.

People Magazine reports that despite Kanye’s initial now-deleted half-assed apology saying he would “apologize to Taylor 2mrw” and was “sooooo sorry to Taylor Swift and her fans and her mom,” he was very unapologetic to Taylor’s mom backstage at the VMAs and kept saying that Beyonce’s video should have won, not Taylor’s. At least Taylor’s mom lit into him. Kanye has since issued a second more contrite and much briefer apology that has no doubt been written by someone with much better sense than he has. “I feel like Ben Stiller in “Meet the Parents” when he messed up everything and Robert De Niro asked him to leave… That was Taylor’s moment and I had no right in any way to take it from her. I am truly sorry. ” Kanye has also turned off comments on his entire blog, which was open to comments as of yesterday morning.

Kanye has shown that he is indeed a jackass, and although the President probably doesn’t want it known that he called him one I think it’s safe to say that most people would agree with him.

Update: here’s the audio