In an interview that aired on Tuesday, The View co-host Sherri Shepherd asked Obama how close his re-election would be.

"When your name is Barack Obama, it's always tight," the president replied, adding that his middle name was "Hussein."

Conservative websites like Hot Air immediately accused the current White House resident of trying to "smear" presumptive Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney's supporters as racist.

Fox News host Megyn Kelly on Wednesday said she felt the need to cover the story because "the blogs are going off on this" and asked Monica Crowley, a Fox News contributor and co-host, to respond.

"It's not fair!" Crowley said of the president's comments. "What he meant was, I'm going to have a tough time because I have this funny name -- this is the line he used in 2008 -- because of my race, because of my ethnicity, because of my name. This is a man who won in 2008 with 53 percent of the vote. It was not a tight election."