On Monday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “NewsNation,” Politico senior political reporter Lois Romano reacted to National Rifle Association CEO Wayne LaPierre’s Sunday “Meet the Press” appearance by saying that the NRA chief has an “optics” problem.
“I think before this whole fight is over, we’re going to be spending hundreds of millions of dollars on this,” Romano said. “You know, he made a very clever point. He’s trying to paint Bloomberg as a guy that’s just going to buy everything. But, the one thing that’s going on here is optics, and basically Bloomberg has on his side sort of this whole notion that it’s time to do something different. And Wayne LaPierre is looking like a tired, you know, old white guy that’s clinging on to something of the past.”
Romano’s terminology is reminiscent of President Barack Obama’s 2008 comment on the residents of “small towns in Pennsylvania” — that “they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them.”