The cat fight occurring between the Romney and Obama campaigns over GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s tenure at Bain Capital dramatically escalated Friday evening as both Romney and President Obama called each other liars in uncommon, major television appearances.
The campaigns have been trading barbs back and forth since The Boston Globe printed a scathing article Thursday accusing Romney of leaving Bain Capital in 2002 rather than 1999 as he claims based on reports submitted to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) at that time.
“Either Mitt Romney, through his own words and his own signature, was misrepresenting his position at Bain to the SEC, which is a felony, or he was misrepresenting his position at Bain to the American people to avoid responsibility for some of the consequences of his investments,” Obama 2012 deputy campaign manager Stephanie Cutter said on a conference call with reporters Thursday in response to the Globe’s article.
However, multiple fact checkers, including reporters at The Washington Post, CNN and Factcheck.org, have said that the Globe’s story doesn’t stand up.
“The president needs to take control of these people,” Romney told ABC’s Jonathan Karl. “He ought to disavow it and reign in these people who are running out of control.”
In an excerpt from an interview with Washington WILJA’s Scott Thurman set to air this weekend President Obama said, “Ultimately Mr. Romney, I think, is going to have to answer those questions, because if he aspires to being president one of the things you learn is, you are ultimately responsible for the conduct of your operations, but again that’s probably a question that he’s going to have to answer and I think that’s a legitimate part of the campaign.”
The Romney campaign fired back in an interview with on CNN saying that Obama’s “disappointing” behavior is very unbecoming of the President of the United States and “beneath” someone who claimed he would change the tone of politics.
“Is this the level that the Obama campaign is willing to stoop to?” Romney asked CNN’s Jim Acosta, calling Democrats’ strategy to ‘Kill Romney’ “disgusting and demeaning.”
Romney said that his campaign should not have to apologize for calling the Obama campaign’s attacks “false and deceptive and dishonest” because multiple fact checkers have proven that the Obama 2012 campaign’s claims about his time at his time at Bain Capital are wrong. Instead, he said Obama’s campaign should apologize to him for suggesting he was felon.
Obama campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt says the campaign will not apologize for the over the top comments made by Cutter.
