Mother Jones has obtained leaked footage of Mitt Romney speaking at a private fundraiser, the magazine’s Washington Bureau Chief David Corn (also an msnbc contributor) reported on Monday. At the fundraiser, a dinner which reportedly occurred earlier this year, Romney set forth a slightly different message from the one he has generally presented to the public.
In the video, the Republican presidential candidate dismisses the “47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what” as people “who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it.”
“To protect the confidential source who provided the video, we have blurred some of the image, and we will not identify the date or location of the event,” writes Corn. However, he specifies that the video was filmed “after Romney had clinched the Republican presidential nomination.”
In various other excerpts from the leaked video, Romney is heard touting his campaign advisers’ experience working for Benjamin Netanyahu and joking, “Had [my father, George Romney] been born of Mexican parents, I’d have a better shot of winning this.” He also predicts, of the country’s near-term economic future, “If it looks like I’m going to win, the markets will be happy. If it looks like the president’s going to win, the markets should not be terribly happy.” Romney’s remarks about the 47 percent “who will vote for the president no matter what” faintly echo what he said to the press following his famously chilly reception before the NAACP. “I hope people understand this, your friends who like Obamacare, you remind them of this,” he said, “if they want more stuff from government tell them to go vote for the other guy—more free stuff. But don’t forget nothing is really free.”
Ned Resnikoff is an urban policy analyst, researcher, writer, and editor. His byline has appeared in a variety of publications, including the New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Dissent, and The Nation. He writes the newsletter Public Comment, which can be found at publiccomment.blog. Recommended
