From the Associated Press:

“It was a dumb mistake on our campaign’s part and I made it clear to my staff in no uncertain terms that it was a mistake,” Obama told the AP in a brief interview in which he referred to the memo as “unnecessarily caustic.”

Last Thursday, Obama’s campaign sent the memo to reporters, demanding that it not be attributed to their campaign. The Clinton campaign obtained the document and sent it to journalists. Since then, it has created a furor in the Indian-American community and raised questions about Obama’s claims that he is above attack politics.

“It is not reflective of the long-standing relationship I have had with the Indian-American community,” Obama said in the interview.

“The issue of outsourcing is a genuine and important issue but to refer to one particular country was, I think, an error and I let all of us know that we’ve got to be more careful about how we communicate,” he said.