Garrett Jackson, Mitt Romney’s body man throughout the 2012 campaign, tells POLITICO that he believes David Axelrod “concocted” a phone call recounted in his memoir coming out Tuesday, “Believer: My Forty Years in Politics.”
Axelrod writes in a passage revealed by the N.Y. Daily News that Obama was “slightly irritated” by Romney’s concession call on election night.
When Obama hung up, he told Axelrod and others who were present that Romney had said: “You really did a great job of getting the vote out in places like Cleveland and Milwaukee.” Axelrod writes that the president added: “In other words, black people. That’s what he thinks this was all about.”
Jackson, 28, said in a phone call from Houston, where he now works as a private-equity analyst: “When I read that, I was furious. … It didn’t happen. … I was right next to the Gov. Hell, it was my phone. I was the one who called [Obama aide] Marvin Nicholson. … Mitt goes: ‘Mr. President, I just wanted to call and congratulate you and your team on a well-fought race, and congratulate you on your victory.’ Then there was a silence on Mitt’s end — we weren’t on speaker.
When asked about this by my colleague John Phillips on PJTV‘s “The Rundown” yesterday, I noted that all of what Axelrod wrote was plausible but, since he wrote it, I didn’t believe a word of it.
Axelrod was Team Lightbringer’s message guru for a very long time. He lies in order to smear Republicans as reflexively as you and I breathe. President Obama and his inner circle know that Romney was right about most of the big things in 2012. They also know that the American public is catching on to that fact. As a result, it’s still a priority for them to bad mouth Romney in an effort to put some heavy gloss on Obama’s legacy.
Good luck with that…
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