David Plouffe, senior advisor to President Obama’s reelection campaign, fired back in unusually harsh terms Sunday in response to former House speaker Newt Gingrich’s assertion that Obama’s comments on the killing of Florida teenager Trayvon Martin were “disgraceful.”

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During a news conference on Friday, the president said that if he had a son, “he’d look like Trayvon.”

Gingrich later responded in an interview on Sean Hannity’s radio show.

“What the president said, in a sense, is disgraceful. . . We should all be horrified, no matter what the ethnic background,” Gingrich said. “Is the president suggesting that, if it had been a white who'd been shot, that would be okay, because it wouldn't look like him?”

“Those comments are reprehensible,” Plouffe said during an appearance on ABC’s “This Week.” “Speaker Gingrich is clearly in the last throes of his political career. And, you know, you can make a decision whether to go out with some shred of dignity or say these irresponsible, reckless things, and he's clearly chosen the latter path, and that's unfortunate for the country.”

Plouffe added that Obama’s focus is “obviously, on the tragedy of losing a young person, any young person, no matter the gender or the race. It's a tragedy for the country.”

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