Politics

The liberal magazine Mother Jones has released video clips of Mitt Romney making controversial remarks to a group of donors. The Romney campaign is scrambling to address the political fallout. Host Michel Martin discusses the comments with U.S. News and World Report columnist Mary Kate Cary and Voto Latino's Maria Teresa Kumar.

Transcript

MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:

I'm Michel Martin and this is TELL ME MORE from NPR News. Coming up, Leo Manzano came home from the London Olympics with a silver medal. It was a proud moment for his family and for the country, but how he displayed that pride landed him in a little hot water. We're going to talk to the runner about that and how he made history in London. That conversation is in just a few minutes.

The emergence of video secretly recorded in May, in which Mitt Romney speaks scornfully of President Obama's supporters, has sparked the inevitable comparisons to controversial comments President Obama made in 2008.

Watching the first 20 minutes of Saturday Night Live's season premiere in Denver, I counted at least four ads by the Obama campaign and liberal groups backing the president. Just one ad countering their message was aired in the same span by the Romney campaign.

Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney told supporters that "there are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what" because they are "dependent upon government ... believe that they are victims ... believe the government has a responsibility to care for them ... these are people who pay no income tax."

Who was he talking about?

The liberal news outlet Mother Jones has followed Monday's leaked video of Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney saying that 47 percent of Americans will vote for President Obama because they are "dependent upon government" and "believe that they are victims," with another clip in which he says Palestinians have "no interest whatsoever

Renee Montagne talks to David Carr, the media and culture columnist for The New York Times, about the trend toward journalists agreeing to quotation approval as a condition of access. Carr says he doesn't think the people who are making history should be allowed to rewrite it.

Mitt Romney's effort to refocus his GOP presidential campaign on substance hit a rough patch Monday night. A secretly filmed video, released by Mother Jones magazine, shows Romney saying nearly half of Americans think they are "victims." Romney says his remarks were not elegantly stated.

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney appears a man under siege.

His political strategists are feuding over the direction of the campaign. He bungled his "presidential moment" with an ill-timed and ill-informed response to violence in Libya that led to the death of a U.S. ambassador and three other Americans.