Hillary Clinton threw New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio under the bus this week after they both participated in a sort of comedy skit that involved a racially charged joke, by claiming in a recent interview that it was all his idea.

"Well, look, it was Mayor de Blasio's skit," she told Cosmopolitan magazine. "He has addressed it, and I will really defer to him because it is something that he's already talked about."

The mayor, whose family is interracial, joked Saturday evening at the annual Inner Circle Dinner in New York City that he runs on "CP time."

"CP time" generally means "colored people's time," which is a racial stereotype suggesting black people are frequently late to events. The mayor didn't actually say the term "colored people's," and instead used the acronym.

After he made the joke, which centered on him explaining why it took him so long to endorse Clinton in the Democratic primary, the former secretary of state jumped in to explain "CP" stood for "cautious politician."

Though the press mostly ignored the awkward moment for the next three days, enough people have raised concerns about the joke to prompt Clinton to respond to the incident.

The problem with her putting the blame on de Blasio, however, is that the show was scripted, suggesting she knew well ahead of time what was going to be said.

"It was clearly a staged show. It was a scripted show. The whole idea was to do the counterintuitive by saying 'cautious politician time," the mayor told CNN this week. "Every actor thought it was a joke on a different convention. That was the whole idea. I think people are missing the point here."

His office said later in a separate statement, "In an evening of satire, the only person this was meant to mock was the mayor himself, period. Certainly no one intended to offend anyone."

Clinton, who had just locked in de Blasio's endorsement, is working hard to court the black vote ahead of the state's Democratic primary on April 19. She is also looking to break the electoral winning streak of her chief primary opponent, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt.