One of Mitt Romney's top campaign advisers wrote a letter to Washington Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler, asking him to reconsider the Four-Pinnochio ruling that Romney's Jeep-to-China lie wasn't actually a lie.
January 26, 2013

One of Mitt Romney's top campaign advisers wrote a letter to Washington Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler, asking him to reconsider the Four-Pinnochio ruling that Romney's Jeep-to-China lie wasn't actually a lie. I don't know why the effort to clear one lie from a campaign built upon lies, but that's what Stuart Stevens has done:

Stevens said his note was prompted by Chrysler’s announcement that it would begin building Jeep models in China.

“I would hope that you would take another look at this and stress test it for accuracy away from the heat of a campaign,” Stevens wrote. “I've been doing campaigns and writing about campaigns for some time and I believe that the ad and Romney's statement were completely accurate, unusually so by any standards.”

So the fact-checker looked at it again, and here's just a snippet of what he found:

"First of all, we should note that our critique of the ad covered more than the Jeep issue. We also faulted the ad for incorrectly citing a PolitiFact column to suggest all fact checkers were critical of Obama’s comments on the bailout. And we noted the Detroit News endorsement cited in the ad was highly critical of Romney’s position on the bailout — and lauded Obama for his “extraordinary” response to the auto industry crisis.

Just those facts alone are worthy of at least Two or Three Pinocchios. The Detroit News editorial, after all, actually backed up Obama’s criticism of Romney’s response to the auto industry crisis, thus undercutting a key message of the ad."

These are just the first two paragraphs of many, explaining all of the lies in the Romney "Jeep" campaign ad, including a new statement from Sergio Marchionne, chairman of Chrysler, reaffirming that Chrysler will not be moving jobs from the United States to China.

Kessler wrapped it up with "We reaffirm our earlier ruling of Four Pinocchios."

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