Holy cow. Check out this train wreck of an interview. I wasn't going to post this because I saw other diaries with the same subject in the title - but none of them included the actual video of the interview - they had already editied the clip into an ad, which I think is in fact less incriminating than watching the entirety of this disastrous segment with Soledad O'Brien:
I first found out about this catastrophic tin-ear moment from MSNBC.
"I'm not concerned about the very poor - we have a safety net there." -Romney
Kudos to Soledad O'Brien for getting Romney to repeat the line a SECOND time!! Bwahahahaaaaaaaaa
transcript:
Romney: By the way, I'm in this race because I care about Americans. I'm not concerned about the very poor -- we have a safety net there. If it needs repair I'll fix it. I'm not concerned about the very rich -- they're doing just fine. I'm concerned about the very heart of America - the 90, 95 percent of Americans who right now are struggling and I'll continue to take that message across the nation.
O'Brien: Alright I know I said last question but I gotta ask: you just said, "I'm not concerned about the very poor because they have a safety net." And I think there are lots of very poor Americans who are struggling who would say that sounds odd. Can you explain that?
Romney: Well, you had to finish the sentence, Soledad. I said I'm not concerned about the very poor that have a safety net, but if it has holes in it, then I will repair them. The challenge right now, we will hear from the Democrat party the plight of the poor. And there's no question it's not good being poor and we have a safety net to help those that are very poor. But my campaign is focused on middle-income Americans. My campaign, you can choose where to focus. You can focus on the rich -- that's not my focus. You can focus on the very poor -- that's not my focus. My focus is on middle income Americans, retirees living on social security, people who can't find work, Folks that have kids that are getting ready to go to college. These are the people who have been most badly hurt during the Obama years. We have a very ample safety net and we can talk about whether it needs to be strengthened or whether it has holes in it. but we have food stamps, we have medicaid, we have housing vouchers, we have programs to help the poor, but the middle-income Americans, they're the ones that are really struggling right now and they need someone who can help get this economy going for them.