CNN’s Candy Crowley has earned a new role — as spokeswoman in a pro-Romney, anti-Obama attack video.
The attack ad shows Crowley saying to the camera that President Barack Obama’s administration “spent two weeks telling us this was about a tape, and there was, you know, this riot outside the Benghazi consulate, which there wasn’t.”
The 106-second ad, titled “Acts of Terror,” was produced by American Crossroads, a GOP-affiliated advocacy group.
Crowley won her role following her open intervention in the Oct. 16 Hofstra University presidential debate, in which she appeared to contradict Gov. Mitt Romney.
She intervened while Romney was showing how Obama had focused blame for the Benghazi attack on a little-known, California-made, YouTube video. Her intervention protected Obama from the claim that he sought to minimize the role of jihadi groups, including allies of al-Qaida.
Republican supporters complained about Crowley’s intervention as Obama’s allies claimed that she knocked down Romney’s charge that Obama tried to mislead Americans during election season about the attack’s cause.
The Crossroads video contradicts the Democrats’ pitch.
“President Obama misled the American people on Tuesday night, and the new American Crossroads video gets to the bottom of it — piece by ugly piece,” according to a statement from the Crossroads group.
The video shows how Obama and his aides pushed the video-caused-a-riot theme for two weeks after the Sept. 11 jihadi attack in Benghazi that killed the U.S. ambassador, an aide and two guards.
Watch:
On several occasions, Obama suggested the video was the cause. On Sept. 25, for example, he spoke at the U.N. General Assembly, cited the video six times and declared his opposition to blasphemy of Islam. “The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam,” claimed the president.
Crossroads’ involvement in the issue suggests that the GOP will continue to push the angle prior to the next presidential debate, which is slated to focus on foreign policy.
Despite Crowley’s intervention in Oct. 16 debate, Romney may also push the controversy during the Oct. 22 debate in Boca Raton, Fla., which will be steered by CBS’ Bob Schieffer.
The push was aided by a Capitol Hill hearing that highlighted evidence that Obama downplayed security in Libya while trying to paint a rosy picture of the so-called “Arab Spring,” which has enormously boosted Islamists’ power in Libya, Egypt, Tunisia and Morocco.
