Ed Gillespie, a senior adviser to Mitt Romney‘s presidential campaign, said Tuesday that President Barack Obama is engaging in “a lot of hypocrisy on the transparency front.”
Gillespie particularly criticized Obama for demanding that Romney release more of his personal tax returns while also “hiding behind” executive privilege to withhold Operation Fast and Furious documents.
“There are transparency issues here,” Gillespie said. “The fact is we have this president at the time, ironically … calling for all of the governor’s tax returns, and yet … they’re hiding behind the executive privilege on the Fast and Furious issue, which is a very important issue, meeting with lobbyists, with the lobbyists they met with off campus after they said there would be a transparent White House.”
Gillespie, speaking in Washington, D.C., at the U.S. Global Leadership Coalition Conference, also said the president does not have a clear economic plan.
“What the American people want to know is, what’s your plan for getting the economy moving again, and we’ve yet to hear from President Obama what his plan is,” he said. “We know after the last jobs report last Friday, out of two policy proposals, one was to raise taxes, again, particularly on small business owners. He said yesterday that if you own a small business, ‘You didn’t build that. Other people did that for you.’ I don’t think that’s how most small business owners feel, but it’s revealing and that’s why he wouldn’t mind raising taxes on small business owners because he thinks they didn’t build those businesses.”
Videography by Sarah Hofmann
