Romney continued his politicized misleading statements
after the facts were known,
according to The Washington Post.In its rush to jump on the fast-moving story, the Romney campaign badly conflated the two things — and then made itself the focus of attention, instead of the administration’s policies or its handling of the crisis. If the Romney campaign had stayed largely silent for the first couple of days, the focus would have remained on the unrest unfolding in the Middle East and the administration’s policy in the region.
The continued reference to the embassy statement as “an apology” was clearly an effort by the Romney campaign to fit the statement — written by a career staffer deep in the bowels of the State Department — into the campaign’s narrative that President Obama apologizes for America. But it is too much a leap. In any administration, the statements that count are the ones issued by the political appointees.
Earlier in the week, we hesitated about handing out Pinocchios because not all of the facts had been established. But now it is pretty evident that the Romney campaign misstated the facts on Tuesday, on Wednesday — and then again on Thursday, even after the peculiar circumstances of this embassy statement had been made abundantly clear.
Three Pinocchios
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