Politics

Romney ‘not going to be too concerned’ about WaPo story on high school years

Jeff Poor Media Reporter
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Whether it was Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s ranch, the origins of Florida Sen. Marco Rubio’s parents or this piece Mitt Romney’s high school years, The Washington Post appears to have become something of a dumping ground for shelved Democratic opposition research.

But Romney said Thursday he isn’t going to be too concerned with the Post’s Jason Horowitz’s most recent story, which paints the presumptive GOP nominee as a prankster and possibly homophobic bully when he was in high school. In an appearance on Fox News Radio’s “Kilmeade & Friends,” Romney responded to the report and chalked his actions up to being an immature high school student.

“I’m not going be too concerned about their piece,” Romney said. “They talked about the fact that I played a lot of pranks in high school, and they describe some that you just say to yourself, ‘well, back in high school I did some dumb things.’ And if anybody was hurt by that or offended, obviously I apologize. But overall, high school years were a long time ago and I’m glad to have had some good friends in those years.”

As for a specific incident spelled out in the lede of Horowitz’s piece, in which Romney allegedly cut the hair of a student who was apparently presumed to be gay, the former Massachusetts governor said he had no memory of the incident.

“You know, I don’t remember that incident,” Romney said. “And I’ll tell you — I certainly don’t believe that I, or I can’t speak for other people of course, thought the fellow was homosexual. That was the furtherest thing from our minds back in the 1960s. So that was not the case. But as for the pranks that were played back then — I don’t remember them all but, again, you know high school days, I did stupid things and I’m afraid I got to say sorry for it.”

Romney also downplayed another incident described in the Post story, which claimed Romney would say “Atta girl!” to a closeted gay student, noting that he was “closeted” and Romney had no way of knowing if he was gay.

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Jeff Poor