In his first appearance after the first presidential debate, President Barack Obama said he was on stage Wednesday with someone who “claimed to be Mitt Romney,” not the “real” Romney.
“When I got onto the stage, I met this very spirited fellow who claimed to be Mitt Romney,” Obama said to laughter from the crowd in Denver, on Thursday at Sloan’s Lake Park.
“But it couldn’t have been Mitt Romney because the real Mitt Romney has been running around the country for the last year promising $5 trillion in tax cuts that favor the wealthy. The fellow onstage last night said he didn’t know anything about that.”
In the past, “the real Mitt Romney” said “we don’t need any more teachers” in America’s classrooms, Obama claimed.
“But the fellow onstage last night, he loves teachers, can’t get enough of them,” he said.
Obama repeated his previous claim that the Mitt Romney “we all know invested in companies that were called pioneers of outsourcing jobs” overseas.
“But the guy onstage last night, he said that he doesn’t even know that there are such laws that encourage outsourcing. He’s never heard of them, never heard of them, never heard of tax breaks for companies that ship jobs overseas. He said that if it’s true, he must need a new accountant,” Obama said.
“We know for sure it was not the real Mitt Romney, because he seems to be doing just fine with his current accountant. So you see, the man onstage last night, he does not want to be held accountable for the real Mitt Romney’s decisions and what he’s been saying for the last year.”
Looking ahead to the next debate, Obama said “it’ll be interesting to see what the guy who was playing Mitt Romney yesterday will say about foreign policy when we meet next, because he said it was tragic to end the war in Iraq.”
According to a CNN poll released Wednesday night, 67 percent of debate watchers said Romney was the winner.