Maine’s GOP governor denies saying Obama ‘hates white people’

Gov. Paul LePage of Maine (R) on Tuesday denied reports that he told a group of Republicans that President Obama “hates white people.”

“I never said that. And you guys are all about gossip,” he told reporters in front of the Maine State House in Augusta, according to CNN affiliate WCSH.

{mosads}The Portland Press Herald reported late Monday that two anonymous state lawmakers said they heard LePage make the remark about the president during a Maine Republican Party fundraiser at the home of John and Linda Fortier.

The state lawmakers said that LePage discussed how Obama could have been the best president ever if he had highlighted his biracial heritage. But the president hasn’t done that because he “hates white people,” they recalled the governor saying.

Other lawmakers who attended the fundraiser said they had not heard LePage make the remark.

LePage has made controversial comments in the past.

In June, he accused Maine Assistant Senate Majority Leader Troy Jackson (D) of being “the first one to give it to the people without providing Vaseline.”

In July 2012, he compared the Internal Revenue Service to the Nazi secret police, the Gestapo.

And in 2010, before he was elected, he told a group of fisherman “As your governor, you’re going to be seeing a lot of me on the front page, saying ‘Governor LePage tells Obama to go to hell.’ “