Fact Check Friday: Romney Accuses Obama Of Apologizing For America
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) - It's Fact Check Friday, when we put the Presidential campaign ads under the scrutiny of factcheck.org, a nonpartisan non-profit part of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.
LISTEN: WCBS 880's Wayne Cabot Checks The Facts
Podcast
Was Mitt Romney accurate in the way he portrayed President Barack Obama in the early hours of the embassy attack in Egypt and the consulate attack in Libya?
The consulate attack claimed the lives of the U.S. Ambassador there, along with three members of his staff.
Did the administration apologize, as Romney said to reporters?
"The statement that came from the administration and the embassy is the administration, the statement that from the administration was a statement which is akin to apology and I think was a severe miscalculation," Romney said.
We asked factcheck.org's Brooks Jackson, who has been researching this.
Romney said the administration issued an "apology for American values." True or false?
"False. When he said that was the first response to the attacks on both our embassies in Libya and in Egypt and he just got his facts backward on this. He got his timeline completely wrong," Jackson told WCBS 880's Wayne Cabot.
Romney says the mob was already inside the embassy grounds when the embassy issued its statement that said "respect for religious beliefs is a cornerstone of American democracy."
Is that a factual statement?
"No. Several hours before the embassy in Cairo was attacked and, of course, long before the embassy in Libya and the tragic deaths there, the U.S. embassy in Cairo put out a statement under the headline 'U.S. embassy condemns religious incitement' and 'it condemns continuing efforts by misguided individuals...' meaning the people who'd put this anti-Muslim film up on YouTube, '... condemns those efforts to hurt the feelings of Muslims,'" Jackson said. "That was issued before any attacks at all."
"This line from Mitt Romney about apologizing for American values, when you were researching that, you found that it came up before in Romney's various speeches?" Cabot said.
"Well, he's even written a boot, 'No Apologies,' and he makes the repeated assertion that Barack Obama has gone around the world 'apologizing for America' quote unquote or 'apologizing for American values' and we've looked at the speeches, as have other fact checkers that Romney refers to, and we don't see an apology there," Jackson said.
Check back next Friday for more debunking of false claims, regardless of which side they come from.
