President Obama was apparently a big fan of Mitt Romney’s derailing 47% video.
The commander in chief personally thanked Jimmy Carter’s grandson, James Carter IV, who played a major role in surfacing the secret speech heard around the world.
James IV told CNN that the two met for the first time last week in Atlanta, Georgia. His cousin, Georgia state Sen. Jason Carter, alerted Obama that it was James IV who found and flagged the video for Mother Jones.
“Then Obama said ‘hey great, get over here’ and then he kind of half-embraced me, I want to say, put his arm around me and we shook hands. He thanked me for my support several times,” said James IV.
Former President Carter reiterated the events to CNN’s Piers Morgan, and described how Obama dashed across a room towards his grandson and “embraced him, and thanked him profusely” for flagging the video.
James IV, passed along the video (filmed by an anonymous source) of Romney at a $50,000 per plate fundraiser in Florida to David Corn, msnbc Political Analyst and editor of Mother Jones. In it, the White House hopeful was seen and heard dismissing nearly half of the electorate as government moochers.
“There are 47% of the people who will vote for the president no matter what,” said Romney in the video. “…There are 47% who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it.”
The former president told Morgan that the video was “a major factor, if not the major factor” in costing Romney the election.
Jeff Lapaix