Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy said in a recent interview with The Guardian that there is a “sense of slavery” in the welfare system, echoing comments he made last year about blacks being “better off as slaves” than on government assistance.

“They abort their young children, they put their young men in jail, because they never learned how to pick cotton,” Bundy said of “the Negro” in April 2014. “And I’ve often wondered, are they better off as slaves, picking cotton and having a family life and doing things, or are they better off under government subsidy?”

Those comments led the Fox News talking heads and Republican congressional heavyweights who’d supported Bundy in his campaign against the federal Bureau of Land Management to abandon him en masse. But in an article published Monday, the rancher told The Guardian that those comments were a “mistake.”

Then he then posed virtually the same question about government assistance as modern-day slavery.

“Receiving welfare and housing – is that a sense of slavery when you get caught up in that and can’t get out of it for generations?” Bundy said, as quoted by The Guardian. “They don’t have freedom.”

Bundy also told the publication that he often sees well dress blacks when he flies, which he said was a sign of progress for the black community.

“They really are progressing and prospering,” the rancher said. “I understand they’ve raised themselves up to a point where they are equal with the rest of us. And I’m so happy for them. But what about those that are in the ghetto and can’t get out?”