After former President Bill Clinton made comments a week ago that presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney wasn’t all that bad and had a successful business career, Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz appeared on CNN’s “Pier Morgan Tonight” on Wednesday to respond and downplay those remarks.
Host Piers Morgan reminded the DNC chairwoman of Clinton’s appearance on his program last week with fill-in host Harvey Weinstein in which he praised Obama’s opponent by defending his “sterling” business career. But according to Wasserman Schultz, that was an incorrect statement.
“No, I don’t agree with President Clinton on that point,” she said. “In fact, Mitt Romney is basing his entire candidacy on his experience in the private sector. And the only application that we have in government to — of Mitt Romney’s sterling private sector experience is when he was governor of Massachusetts, in which he brought Massachusetts from being 36th to 47th out of 50 in job creation.”
Wasserman Schultz went on to speak on Clinton’s behalf saying that he was “100 percent behind Obama,” despite interpretations of those remarks that suggest otherwise.
“If you listen to the rest of President Clinton’s interview, he made it very clear that he thinks that Mitt Romney’s practices and the way he carried out his private sector experience does not make him suitable to be president of the United States,” she continued. “President Clinton is 100 percent behind President Obama, and believes that President Obama should continue as president of the United States. That’s the bottom line.”
Wasserman Schultz then referred to the standard Democratic criticisms of Romney and reiterated Romney’s job creation record as governor.
“The rest of it is sort of window dressing,” she continued. “But there’s no getting away from the fact that the only example we have of Mitt Romney’s supposedly sterling private record experience is in Massachusetts, in which on top of being 47th out of 50th in job creation, he also lost manufacturing jobs at twice the national rate. Really, when it came right down to it, had very little, if nothing, to show for that private sector experience as governor of Massachusetts, and actually made things worse.”
“So I think if you look at President Obama’s record by comparison, taking us after inheriting the largest set of problems at once of any president since FDR, now three years later, thanks to his policies, even Gov. Bob McDonnell last Sunday on ‘Meet the Press’ acknowledged that it was President Obama’s policies that helped Virginia be able to not have to cut their budget,” she added.
