There is nothing wrong with flying the Stars and Stripes during an election year; after all, in a democracy, people get to hear all sides and then decide whom they will vote for.
Unless, of course, your argument is based on a wrong assumption. Even worse if you make a statement in front of a wide audience based on misinterpreting a news report…
Mitt Romney, the Republicans’ 2012 presidential candidate, told an Ohio crowd last Thursday night that Jeep is considering moving all of its production to China.
“I saw a story today that one of the great manufacturers in this state Jeep — now owned by the Italians — is thinking of moving all production to China”, Romney said during a rally in Defiance, Ohio, where a GM powertrain plant is based. “I will fight for every good job in America. I’m going to fight to make sure trade is fair, and if it’s fair America will win.”
If Romney did read the Bloomberg News story about Chrysler and its plans for producing Jeeps in China, he should have paid more attention or perhaps gone to the trouble of reading beyond the first paragraph.
Had he done so, he would have refrained from making that statement. Here’s what Bloomberg editor Craig Trudell wrote on October 22:
“Fiat SpA (F), majority owner of Chrysler Group LLC, plans to return Jeep output to China and may eventually make all of its models in that country, according to the head of both automakers’ operations in the region.”
For argument’s sake, let’s assume that the former Governor of Massachusetts skipped the “may eventually” part of Trudell’s intro. It’s impossible, though, to have missed the part where the editor clearly states that Fiat-Chrysler COO in Asia Mike Manley says that he was talking about “adding Jeep production sites rather than shifting output from North America to China”.
You can view the blunder, courtesy of MSNBC’s The Ed Show, in the video that follows the jump.
By Andrew Tsaousis
VIDEO