President Obama’s campaign spokeswoman on Air Force One declared that the attacks on Mitt Romney over Bain Capitol were part of a “highbrow debate” that the president is waging with his rival, who declared them “disgusting” on Friday.
“Of course the President wants to have a highbrow debate about these policy issues and what the American people actually care about,” Jen Psaki told reporters on Saturday. “And we think that it’s completely justified to raise questions — we have, many outside groups have, many media outlets have — about why [Romney] had an account in Switzerland, why he had investments in the Cayman Islands, what exactly this corporation was in Bermuda.”
When a reporter suggested that such lines of attack are not “highbrow,” Psaki countered that they are. “Those are raising questions about the qualifications he is putting forward of why he should be President,” she said.
She made those comments after playing a video attacking Romney — who is featured singing in the video — for outsourcing. The video prompted a member of the press corps to ask, “why kind of mock his singing in that ad?”
Earlier this week, Obama deputy campaign manager Stephanie Cutter suggested that Romney had misrepresented his relationship with Bain Capital after 1999 in federal government documents — “which is a felony,” she said. Romney demanded an apology for what he called a “disgusting” and “demeaning” attack during a circuit of network news on Friday. He told CNN that he “was the owner of an entity that is filing that information, but I had no role whatsoever in the management of Bain Capital after 1999.”
Psaki defended Cutter during the Saturday gaggle. “What was said was either he was misleading the American people, or he was misleading the SEC, which it would be a felony,” Psaki said. “Nobody — she, Stephanie Cutter did not accuse anybody of taking — of committing a felony. She raised the issue that you can’t have both.”
Romney noted Friday that various fact-checkers have sided with him on the issue, as the Obama charge “got multiple Pinocchios from one reviewer.”
