Romney: Regular People Teach Him About Struggles
Mitt Romney says he learns about what it’s like to struggle in a difficult economy by sitting down to chat with regular people. But the Republican presidential candidate doesn’t want anybody to see it — and his campaign won’t say who he meets with or when the meetings occur.
In interviews and on the campaign trail, Romney regularly says that he learns about the struggling economy by talking to people affected by it. Earlier this week, he said he meets with families “almost every day.” On Friday, Romney said the talks are “off the record” — and that he agrees to keep private the names of the people he meets with.
“Before I begin an event like this, I typically am able to sit down with a few people on an off-the-record kinda basis,” Romney said as he delivered his standard campaign speech Friday in Pittsburgh.
“I agree not to say who they are to the members of my media,” he said, before joking: “My media, I don’t have my media, I wish I had my media. To members of the media.”
That description was slightly different from one he offered on Tuesday.
“So far during my campaigns one of the highlights for me has been sitting down with three or four families almost every day without the camera there,” he said during an interview with CBS News. “Most of them are done privately — that is a wonderful way for me to understand how people are really feeling.”