Decrying Mitt Romney as an uncaring corporate executive, AFL-CIO boss Richard Trumka Thursday shrugged off pro-Obama ads like one that effectively blames Romney for the death of a laid-off steel worker’s wife.
“That’s the by product of Citizens United,” the Supreme Court case that opened the door to private groups like the sponsor of the ad, Priorities USA, to run unregulated super political action committees.
Trumka said he wasn’t fully briefed on the highly-controversial ad, but had read about it and he echoed what the ad’s speaker, Joe Soptic, said when describing how Romney’s Bain Capital closed the GST Steel Plant in Kansas City, Mo., eliminating his health care benefits.
“I think what he was saying was that Bain Capital took away my job” when the firm was closed, said the labor chief. “He lost his health care and he says that his wife died several months later, I think 20 months later, or something like that because he lost his health care,” said Trumka.
During a media breakfast hosted by the Christian Science Monitor, the AFL-CIO president made a similar attack on Romney, describing the Republican as an elitist who is out of touch with working class Americans and a pro at profiting off closing companies during his Bain years.
“When it comes to working people there is no contest. Barack Obama is more for working people than Mitt Romney,” said Trumka whose group plans to dispatch 400,000 volunteers in 20 battleground states to campaign for Obama and the Democrats.
“Mitt Romney is for the very rich. He doesn’t identify with us. He doesn’t understand what we go through every day. He doesn’t understand the decisions that we have to make. He doesn’t understand it’s tough to send kids to school, you shouldn’t be slashing aid to colleges,” said Trumka.
He also accused Romney of playing by his own rules in business and politics. “It’s about him saying, ‘I’m special. I don’t have to play by the rules,'” said Trumka. “It’s him being elite.”
