I swear – you can’t make this stuff up … in 2002 – Mitt Romney apparently said the following:
“You Olympians, however, know you didn’t get here solely on your own power. For most of you, loving parents, sisters or brothers encouraged your hopes, coaches guided, communities built venues in order to organize competitions. All Olympians stand on the shoulders of those who lifted them. We’ve already cheered the Olympians, let’s also cheer the parents, coaches, and communities. All right!”
~Mitt Romney in 2002 (source)
This is super ironic because Mitt Romney’s latest attack ad chops up and distorts President Obama saying something EERILY similar. Here’s what the ad has President Obama saying:
If you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own. You didn’t get there on your own. I’m always struck by people who think, well, it must be ’cause I was just so smart. There are a lot of smart people out there. It must be because I worked harder than everybody else. Let me tell you something: If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.
But this is what the President ACTUALLY said:
If you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own. You didn’t get there on your own. I’m always struck by people who think, well, it must be ‘cause I was just so smart. There are a lot of smart people out there. It must be because I worked harder than everybody else. Let me tell you something: There are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there. If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.
Everything in bold is what Romney’s attack ad omits from the audio as they chop up and distort what the President actually said. Of course – by “THAT” – he means roads and bridges and internet and infrastructure and public education etc.
Glenn Kessler – the fact checker at the Washington Post – gives the ad 3 Pinocchios. In other words – it’s false. He writes HERE:
The biggest problem with Romney’s ad is that it leaves out just enough chunks of Obama’s words — such as a reference to “roads and bridges”— so that it sounds like Obama is attacking individual initiative. The ad deceivingly cuts away from Obama speaking in order to make it seem as if the sentences follow one another, when in fact eight sentences are snipped away.
Suddenly, the word “that” appears as if it is referring to a business, rather than (apparently) to roads and bridges.
Here is the ad that Romney is using to make President Obama seem like he is anti-small business:
