Washington: Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney has finally admitted that his ‘wrongly stated’ comments in which he disparaged 47 percent of Americans as dependent on government ‘were just completely wrong’, as he attempted to repair the damage from the controversy.
“I said something that’s just completely wrong,” Romney said in an interview with Fox News.
“And I absolutely believe, however, that my life has shown that I care about 100 percent and that's been demonstrated throughout my life. And this whole campaign is about the 100 percent," he added.
According to the Huffington Post, the original remarks, secretly recorded during a fundraiser in May and posted online in September by the magazine Mother Jones, led to intense criticism of Romney.
“There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what,” Romney had said in the video.
“Forty-seven percent of Americans pay no income tax,” Romney said, adding: “That his role ‘is not to worry about those people’. I’ll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives."
According to the report, he had later defended his remarks at a news conference, where he said that the comments were ‘not elegantly stated’.
ANI
First Published: Friday, October 05, 2012, 13:58