White House press secretary Jen Psaki speaks during the daily briefing at the White House in Washington, on July 19, 2021. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

       WASHINGTON (Kyodo) -- The White House said Thursday that it supports the Tokyo Olympic organizing committee's move to fire a director of the creative team behind the games' opening and closing ceremonies over his past joke about the Holocaust.

       "We certainly support that decision," Press Secretary Jen Psaki told a press conference, referring to the dismissal of former comedian Kentaro Kobayashi, which came just a day before the official start of the global sporting event already marred by a string of embarrassments.

       Psaki added that the incident will not affect U.S. first lady Jill Biden's plan to attend the opening ceremony on Friday to support her country's athletes and represent the government at the highest level.

       The wife of U.S. President Joe Biden is visiting the Japanese capital from Thursday.

       Kobayashi was ousted Thursday from the post of "show director" in charge of overseeing different segments of the ceremonies after a video clip from the 1990s resurfaced online, showing him in a comedy act that included the phrase, "Let's play the genocide of the Jews."

       The news sparked condemnation including from the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a Jewish human rights organization headquartered in Los Angeles, which called Kobayashi's association with the Tokyo Olympics an "insult" to the memory of some 6 million Jews killed in the genocide carried out by Adolf Hitler's Nazi Germany during World War II.

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