WATCH: Stacey Abrams Says It Was ‘Inartful’ to Call Georgia ‘Worst Place to Live’ – Reacts to Perdue Saying She ‘Demeaned Her Race’

Georgia Democratic candidate for Senate Stacey Abrams said she was “inartful” in her delivery of remarks about her home state, and responded to Republican rival David Perdue’s claim that she “demeaned her race.”

On Monday night’s edition of MSNBC’s The ReidOut, host Joy Reid played Abrams’ comments to the Gwinnett Democats’ Bluetopia Gala, for which, Reid noted, she is getting a lot of “heat.”

I am tired of hearing about being the best state in the country to do business, when we are the worst state in the country to live.

(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)

ABRAMS: Now, somebody’s going to try to PolitiFact me on this, so let me contextualize.

When you’re number 48 for mental health, when you’re number one for maternal mortality, when you have an incarceration rate that’s on the rise and wages that are on the decline, then you are not the number one place to live.

“I mean, find the lie. I mean, where’s the lie?” Reid said, to laughter from Abrams, and asked “Why do you suppose that has caused so much contretemps?”

“I think it was inartfully delivered,” Abrams acknowledged, then explained, and stood by, her point that “we are listening to Brian Kemp give a — give narrative about a record that does not reflect reality.”

Abrams ticked through various types of relief that she says Kemp has refused or blocked, and said “so my point is well-intended, which is that, for so many Georgians, this is not the number one place to be. But we have the capacity for greatness. And if people didn’t splice the pieces they like and actually listen to my entire narrative, my point is that I want more for Georgia.”

Reid went on to play video of comments that Perdue made on the John Fredericks Show in response to Abrams, attacking her and accusing her of “demeaning her own race”:

Did y’all see what Stacey said this weekend? Said that Georgia’s the worst place in the country to live.

Hey, she ain’t from here. Let her go back where she came from, she doedn’t like it here. The only thing she wants to be president of the United States. She doedn’t care about the people of Georgia. That’s clear.

You know, when we saw in 18 what she did and what she said, oh, we’re going to have a blue wave. We’re going to do it with documented and undocumented workers. You know, I don’t think a lot of people in Georgia understood it. When she told black farmers, you don’t need to be on the farm. And she told black workers in hospitality and all this, you don’t need to be. She is demeaning her own race when it comes to that.

“I find it very hard to believe that David Perdue is the great advocate for black people in Georgia,” Reid said following the clip, again drawing a laugh from Abrams.

“But he’s gone back to some 1950s phraseology about demeaning your race,” Reid said, and asked “Your thoughts?”

“I think that, regardless of which Republican it is, I have yet to hear them articulate a plan for the future of Georgia,” Abrams said, and delivered a lengthy response contrasting her record and plans with theirs, and then addressed her own remarks a final time:

I challenge every Republican to stop focusing on the little bit of rhetoric and actually show me in your record where you are serving black farmers, instead of suing to make certain they can’t have access to the resources they have been begging for, for 40 years.

Show me where you are showing up in communities that are grappling with not only gun violence, but with hunger, and you’re solving that problem. Tell me how you’re going to make certain that families that need rental assistance will get it, because Brian Kemp has kept millions of dollars out of the hands of families in the middle of the pandemic.

He has been willing to help companies, but never help their workers. And that, to me, is the record we should be talking about.

I can apologize all day for my phrasing, but I will never apologize for my meaning. And that is that we mean to serve the people of Georgia and we mean to make Georgia better for everyone. And I want to lift everyone up.

Watch above via MSNBC.