As Think Progress noted today, the one thing the Romney campaign has been really good at is projecting their worst attributes onto President Obama, and we got another dose of that this Tuesday on Andrea Mitchell's show on MSNBC, where she let Romney surrogate, John Sununu walk all over her and tell lies about the stimulus money going to companies that did work overseas:
Andrea Mitchell Struggles To Respond To Claim Obama Outsourced Jobs Via Stimulus:
MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell struggles in her attempt to respond to a charge by guest John Sununu that President Obama is the job outsourcer, not Mitt Romney.
Andrea Mitchell, MSNBC: Isn't it a winning issue for the White House, fundamentally, granted that the PolitiFact folks and the Washington Post pointing out that the President's campaign ad on that issue had a lot of questions and a lot of questionable attacks?
John Sununu: But they said it was wrong. A lot of questionable tactics is not right, it was wrong.
Mitchell: But the point is, that isn't Mitt Romney more vulnerable than the President on this issue because there still is -- the whole question of private equity of outsourcing. Yo could argue about when he left Bain Capital and whether he was still getting money from Bain Capital and what some of the companies in Bain were doing, companies that did end up working overseas and sending jobs overseas. But isn't it a bigger problem for Republicans than for the White House?
Sununu: No. When you've sent $500 million to Fisker and it goes to Finland immediately. When you send the solar money and it goes to Mexico. When you send the turbine money and it goes to Denmark. And we can go on all day. There is $29 billion worth of purchases that came out of this administration, outsourced jobs to foreign countries.
Mitt Romney outsourced zero --
Mitchell: Zero?
Sununu: Zero. He wasn't there when those issues came up.
Mitchell: Well, first of all the $29 billion are not all outsourced from the administration because ---
Sununu: Sure they are.
Mitchell: A lot of those jobs still remained here. There are jobs -- when you do a grant, governor, there are jobs here as well as overseas.
Sununu: [laughing] You're struggling, Andrea. You're struggling.
Mitchell: First of all, these are competing claims and we will get back to you with all of the numbers.
As the Think Progress post linked above noted, Sununu's claims have already been debunked and surprise, surprise, he was reading off a list from an Americans for Prosperity ad buy: FACT CHECK: Americans For Prosperity Announces $6.1 Million Ad Buy To Push Totally False Green Jobs Claims:
After pouring more than $8.4 million into bogus energy attack ads since November, the oil industry front group Americans For Prosperity announced yet another major ad buy of $6.1 million in eight states.
The latest ad is based on a set of mistruths about green jobs that have been widely debunked.
In the ad, AFP explains that “billions of taxpayer dollars spent on green energy went to jobs in foreign countries,” and uses four examples that supposedly prove that Obama’s clean energy stimulus created foreign jobs instead of domestic ones.
All four examples are either mostly or completely false.
1. The ad claims that $1.2 billion is being used to create solar jobs in Mexico. This point was completely made up by a random conservative blogger and has been repeatedly called out as a lie. This $1.2 billion loan guarantee was issued for a large, first-of-its-kind solar plant in California being developed by NRG. However, the blogger falsely wrote that the money was being used to create manufacturing jobs in Mexico.
In reality, the jobs created in Mexico had absolutely nothing to do with the loan guarantee. The only connection to Mexico was that some of the solar panels would be coming from a manufacturing plant located there. And even though the source of the panels had nothing to do with the decision to issue the loan guarantee, the company providing the panels, SunPower, explained that most of the panels were coming from America anyway.
2. The ad claims that a loan guarantee for an electric vehicle manufacturer went to jobs in Finland. This is also a made up story pushed by Fox News and conservative bloggers. In fact, all of the money used through the loan guarantee went toward building a U.S. manufacturing facility.
There were some jobs created in Finland during final assembly of the vehicles, but that was announced up front in 2009 when the loan guarantee was issued. According to the Department of Energy, all of the money set aside for Fisker’s next-generation vehicle manufacturing was issued for American operations. Read on...
Maybe Andrea Mitchell can take some time to read their article before she has Sununu on again and lets him spew lies in her face.
