When asked by reporters this afternoon if President Obama’s speech to the United Auto Workers union was a campaign speech, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney denied it.
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“No at all,” said Carney, “The president was speaking to American Workers which he enjoys doing.”
Carney added that the president’s decision to bail out the auto industry was “difficult,” for him politically. “It was not a popular decision, but it was the right decision,” Carney said.
When asked if the president was directly challenging Mitt Romney when he mocked critics who said, ‘Let Detroit go bankrupt,” Carney would only say that a “number of critics” said that phrase. (A New York Times op-ed by Romney at the time was titled ‘Let Detroit go Bankrupt.’)
As ABC’s Jake Tapper noted, the speech included five specific references to Mitt Romney’s public statements on the bailout.
“There’s a whole list of people who opposed this policy, who oppose it now but try to alter the way that they opposed it”, Carney added slyly.
