George H.W. Bush: “You don't have to ask baseball, but I just want to use this program, Bill, if I can to say something about the flag…”

“You don't have to ask baseball, but I just want to use this program, Bill, if I can to say something about the flag situation. Maybe I could do it before; then you'd be unfettered by my trying to define what you should ask about. But here's the thing on the Canadian flag inadvertently flown upside down. If that had happened in Canada and we'd have seen the United States flag flown upside down, every American would have been very, very upset. This was a mistake. Certainly, nobody would ever do anything like that on purpose. So what I wanted to use your program for is to say how badly I feel about it, how badly all the American people feel about it, how much we value our friendship with Canada. They are our strongest trading partner in the whole world, and we would do nothing to hurt the national pride of Canada. So, on behalf of all Americans, I simply wanted to apologize to the people of Canada and suggest we try to keep this now, from now on, out of the marvelous baseball rivalry between Atlanta and Toronto. And that's all I want to say. Mr. Nigut. How are you going to feel tonight? We are likely to see-- they're planning on flying a lot of American flags upside down tonight in Toronto. How are you going to feel if you see that?”