Joe Soptic: Obama Ad, Conference Call

UPDATE: Obama Campaign Also Tied Romney To Woman's Death

A SuperPAC supporting Obama is under fire for airing an ad in which a steelworker accused Romney of making decisions that led to his wife's death. The Obama campaign has kept its distance from the ad — but it made the same charge, in a screenshot that appeared in an official Obama campaign slideshow.

It just keeps getting worse.
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UPDATE: Obama camp acknowledges knowing man's story

Obama campaign spokeswoman Jen Psaki acknowledged Thursday that the campaign was no longer pleading ignorance about the story of a man who has appeared in both a super PAC ad and a campaign ad.

"No one is denying he was in one of our campaign ads. He was on a conference call telling his story," Psaki told reporters on Air Force One.

...Distancing themselves from the controversial ad, Obama campaign staffers initially denied knowledge of Soptic's story — despite the fact that he was in an Obama campaign ad.

Obama is untrustworthy.

His surrogates are willing to flat-out lie to the American public.

Amanda Henneberg, a spokesperson for the Romney campaign, said this in a statement: "President Obama’s campaign has been caught lying about its knowledge concerning a vicious smear run by his Super PAC. And now, they have doubled down with another dishonorable and dishonest attack. In 2008, candidate Obama said ‘you make a big election about small things’ when you don’t have a record to run on. Since President Obama can’t run on record unemployment, falling incomes, and massive debt, he has decided to run a dirty campaign that is an affront to everything he claims to stand for."

Obama is running a very dirty campaign.

He fooled a lot of people in 2008.

We know Obama now.

That's bad for him. The truth is Obama's worst enemy.
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I'm convinced Obama and his team will say anything to win in November.

It's so risky. It's so stupid.

What Breitbart calls "one of the most ugly, misleading ads in campaign history" has exposed the truth about Obama and his supporters.

They're ruthless. They're liars. They have no sense of decency. They have no shame.

The Obama political machine's race to the bottom has dived deep beneath the muck of Harry Reid's lies about Romney's taxes and finally hit bedrock. Today Priorities USA released a new ad that will surely rank among the ugliest and most dishonest in the history of political campaigns. Titled "Understands" the ad features Joe Soptic describing how Mitt Romney is responsible for his wife's death from lung cancer. It's Lyndon Johnson's Daisy ad made more personal and therefore even more vile.

Here's the ad:



This disgusting piece of trash has blown up in Obama's face.

CNN reviewed the ad this afternoon and found it is “not accurate.” Turns out Soptic’s wife still had her own insurance after he lost his job. She stopped working as a result of an accident:

In 2001, Joe Soptic loses his job when Bain closes the plant. His wife still has insurance, though, through her employer, Saver’s thrift store. A year later, Romney formerly leaves Bain. And it's that year, 2002, or perhaps 2003, Soptic tells CNN, that his wife leaves her job because of an injury. That's when she became uninsured without fallback insurance from her husband. A few years later, in 2006, she goes to the hospital is diagnosed with cancer and dies just days later.

Bill Burton at Priorities USA is now claiming that he did not intend to connect Romney to the death of Soptic’s wife. This is obviously a lie. Watch the video. There’s no other conclusion you can draw from it. This ad is so dirty that even the people who made it don’t want to take credit for it.

This really is sick.

But it gets worse.

The Obama campaign and the White House won't condemn it.

Instead, Obama and company are attempting to distance themselves from it and to deflect attention away from their lies and unforgivable deception.

Jay Carney and Obama surrogates are flipping out over this ad from Mitt Romney:



Obviously, they're acting outraged about the ad in an attempt to change the subject. They realize they have a major league mess on their hands with the outrageous Joe Soptic ad.

Obama's camp is in full denial about the despicable ad and Joe Soptic, which is only making things worse.

From Politico:

When President Obama’s aides said they weren’t familiar with former Missouri steelworker Joe Soptic’s life story, all they had to do was check their own campaign archives.

Soptic, laid off from Bain Capital-owned GST Steel, stars in a Priorities USA Action spot this week in which he tells of how his wife died without health insurance after he lost his job. Soptic also appeared, wearing what appears to be an identical shirt, in a May television ad for the Obama campaign.

Asked about the Priorities spot on MSNBC Wednesday morning, Robert Gibbs said he doesn’t “know the specifics” while Stephanie Cutter said on CNN: “I don’t know the facts about when Mr. Soptic’s wife got sick or the facts about his health insurance.”

And Jen Psaki told reporters on Air Force One that “we don't' have any knowledge of the story of the family,” according to Yahoo! News.

But Cutter hosted an Obama campaign conference call in May in which Soptic told reporters the very story featured in the Priorities spot.

Both the campaign and the Priorities USA Action said there was no coordination about Soptic’s appearances. In the campaign’s ad, Soptic speaks only about the plant. In the Priorities spot, he tells the personal story he relayed during the Obama campaign conference call.

“We have no idea when Priorities shot their spot,” an Obama campaign official said. “We’re not allowed to coordinate with them – but we can tell you it wasn’t when we shot ours.”

The aide didn’t answer questions about when the Obama campaign shot its Soptic footage or explain Cutter’s televised statement.

Priorities USA Action senior strategist Bill Burton said the super PAC found shot its Soptic footage at a union hall in early February.

“We didn’t know that he was doing an [Obama campaign] ad,” Burton said.

The fact is Joe Soptic and his lies were part of Obama's arsenal. They used him, but now they're pretending they know nothing about him.

They can deny and they can spin, but facts are facts.

Obama promised to be different. It was not going to be politics as usual. This was a new era.

What a crock!

Would it really be that difficult for Obama to admit the ad goes way over the line and denounce it?

I guess so.