Scott Prouty, 47% Cameraman, Comes Out of the Shadows

Last week Scott Prouty finally came out of the shadows to do a major interview on MSNBC's Ed Show. Prouty is the man who infamously filmed Mitt Romney at a fundraiser in Florida bad-mouthing the 47% of people whom he said "wouldn't take responsibility for their lives" and who want a free ride in society. Prouty says his first reaction was that the important part of Romney's remarks were the ones concerning forced labor of young women in China, and it bothered him so much he couldn't sleep at night. Finally he faced himself in the mirror and decided to release the video.

But it was a long strange trip:

From Huffington Post:

. . . On May 31, under "Romney Exposed," he began posting audio snippets to YouTube. Soon he started hitting the comment sections of The Huffington Post -- not the best way to stand out among all the reader debates.

Prouty said he later posted it to Daily Kos with mixed results. The Daily Kos readers ended up bouncing him from the site, suspecting his footage was bogus. He threw up clips on Pastebin. He did it in the comments of The Washington Post's stories. "Just trying to go build a little head of steam and get people talking about it," he said.

By late August, he said there were a few sites, including BuzzFeed, that had picked up at least one of his Romney videos. He said he had some success when he posted videos as the MSNBC host Rachel Maddow on YouTube. "She came out and denied having any knowledge of it," he said. "But she linked to the video and left it on her site all weekend long."

The filmmaker said that before the Republican National Convention, he contacted the Romney campaign directly. "I sent it to the Romney people ad nauseum," he said. "They knew about it." When he saw Romney give his acceptance speech in Tampa, he wondered what the candidate knew about his videos. He says he never got a response from the campaign.

. . . He found James Carter, the grandson of former President Jimmy Carter, who had discovered a talent for opposition research and finding gotcha videos deep in the C-Span archives. Prouty had followed Carter's work on YouTube. "He had good sense enough to follow me back when he saw my videos after I followed him," Prouty said. "Then he had the good sense enough to contact me after that."

Prouty said he wanted Carter to help him get in touch with Mother Jones' David Corn. He had been a big admirer of Corn's work -- especially his investigative pieces on Romney and the Hong Kong-based Global-Tech Appliances, a firm that sought to profit from U.S. outsourcing. He saw Corn on television all the time, he said. Maybe the veteran journalist could get his little film on the air. "They were picked," he said of Carter and Corn.
The one thing that now rankles Prouty is the idea that Corn uncovered anything. It was already out there. "Corn sort of -- he's capitalized on this for all it's worth and that's what the goal was," he said. "I don't want to say it the wrong way. He didn't uncover."

Later Corn wrote a book which I highly recommend ~ 47 Percent: Uncovering the Romney Video That Rocked the 2012 Election ~
which recently won Corn the prestigious Polk Award for journalism.

I wouldn't be at all surprised if David Corn next wins a Pulitzer for this reporting, but Prouty is correct - he is the real power behind the story, and he's the one who took the video and shopped it around. If undercover reporters get Pulitzers, then perhaps he should share the honors with Corn.

The Ed Show is losing the 8 p.m. time slot on MSNBC and moving to the weekend, so this interview really helped him go out with a bang.

Complete Transcript of The Ed Show, March 13 ~ Interview with Scott Prouty

"My name is Scott Prouty. I'm a working-class regular guy. I'd like to think I have a good moral compass and a core, and I think I have a little more empathy than Mitt Romney had."

. . . PROUTY: We got there, you know, it was a -- you know, a political
fund-raiser. We did our usual thing. We set up. And you know, it went
off without a hitch.
I work high end parties from all over for extra money. And, you know,
it was really just another typical party that I have done plenty of them
just like it.

SCHULTZ: Did you know you were going to record him?

PROUTY: You know, I did -- I brought the camera. A lot of other people brought cameras, you know, like I said thinking he would come back and take pictures. Clinton in the past did come back with the staff and taking pictures. That was really my thought. You know, I hadn`t made up my mind. You know, I was willing to listen to what he had to say. I was interested to hear what he had to say.

. . . SCHULTZ: All right. Let`s look at the 47 percent comment which you admit and I think we all know, got the most play out of all of this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ROMNEY: There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent were with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe that government has a responsibility to care to them, who believe they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, you name it.
(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCHULTZ: What was your response, initially?

PROUTY: You know, I knew where he came from. He was born with all the advantages -- you know, advantages that few people have, the son of a governor, CEO. You know, prep school educated, Harvard educated, you know?

And I don`t think he has any clue what a regular American goes through on a daily basis. I don`t think he has any idea what a single mom, you know, taking a bus to work, dropping her kid off at day care that she can barely afford, hopping on another bus -- you know, the day in, day out struggles of every day Americans. That guy has no idea, no idea.

I don`t think he`ll ever have an idea.

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Hardball Nails Romney as Too Aggressive, Lacking Manners

pic via Gifwich

From the Hardball Post-Debate Wrap-Up Last Night (My Transcript)

Chris Matthews: I thought Romney, he looked like a big-shot CEO who walks into the room and thinks he owns any room he's in, especially what seems like a board room. And he just starts pushing, it's always physical, he just swats them away like flies. He knows they make less than him, and he treats them that way. You know what I'm talking about? He treats moderators as low-grade below the line employees.

John Heileman: The Help.

David Corn of Mother Jones: The Help. I just think the contrast between the first debate and the second debate is that Mitt Romney is excellent at presenting a case. you know, he had to do it as a consultant, walk into these boardrooms with CEOs and say 'I know better than you do.' He had to do it at Bain Capital, get people to give him millions of dollars. And he was unchallenged in the first debate! So he was able to present his case.
But in this debate he got challenged in two directions. From the Moderator Candy Crowley, who I think was fantastic! And also by the President, who didn't let him get away with anything. He had a hard time callibrating how to respond.

Chris Matthews: Here, John (Heileman), respond to this - here he is interrupting Moderator Candy Crowley and trying to go back to answer an earlier question, as if he's going to define the whole format. He also tried to tell Crowley the rules of the debate. He was instructing her, of course. Let's listen:

CROWLEY: -- and the next question --

ROMNEY: He actually got --

CROWLEY: -- for you --

ROMNEY: He actually got the first question. So I get the last question -- last answer --

CROWLEY: (Inaudible) in the follow up, it doesn't quite work like that. But I'm going to give you a chance here. I promise you, I'm going to.

And the next question is for you. So if you want to, you know, continue on -- but I don't want to leave all --

ROMNEY: Candy, Candy --

CROWLEY: -- sitting here --

ROMNEY: Candy, I don't have a policy of stopping wind jobs in Iowa and that -- they're not phantom jobs. They're real jobs.

CROWLEY: OK.

ROMNEY: I appreciate wind jobs in Iowa and across our country. I appreciate the jobs in coal and oil and gas. I'm going to make sure --

CROWLEY: OK.

ROMNEY: -- we're taking advantage of our energy resources. We'll bring back manufacturing to America. We're going to get through a very aggressive energy policy, 31/2 million more jobs in this country. It's critical to our future.

OBAMA: Candy, it's not going to --

CROWLEY: We're going to move you along --

OBAMA: Used to being interrupted.

CROWLEY: We're going to move you both along to taxes over here and all these folks that have been waiting.

Chris Matthews: Can you imagine a flight attendant trying to get him to turn off his phone? The guy just doesn't turn off the damn phone. You know he has fifty excuses, 'by the way I paid for this seat, screw you' basically, with that attitude.

David Corn: He has his own plane!

Chris: Oh, I forgot - he doesn't have to fly with a flight attendant.

John Heileman: I just think Governor Romney did not look good in that exchange. I think in general, and this is the point you started out on raising, they both whined about time keeping. They both interrupted each other.

Chris: But once one guy does it, if the other guy doesn't, he is the victim.

John Heileman: I agree. I just think that from the standpoint of the women voters that you were raising, I think there are a lot of voters who are kinda like - at those moments they look like petty schoolchildren. Talking over each other. Governor Romney was the worst, though, at the moment he said to President Obama "Hold On, you'll get your turn."

Chris: "Hold on, you'll get your turn." Where do you get that chutzpah?

Heileman: Yeah, to the President of the United States. I think in a debate you should have forceful confrontations, but there's something so pat and condescending.

Chris: Without the cordiality and civility, with that lack of deference to the Office.

Heileman: Yes! Whoa - "Hold on son, you'll get your turn" is kinda like - whoa, come on man.



David Corn: Romney wasn't challenged in the first debate. So therefore he didn't have to figure out how to respond. He could focus on making his powerpoint presentation to the voters without being interrupted. And Obama just sort of let him go through. This time around he seemed to get rattled again and again and again. He didn't know whether to deal with the voter asking him the question, whether to deal with the President, or to deal with the moderator. And he got very testy.

Heileman That exchange also reminds you of that one exchange during the Republican Primary Debates when he turned to Anderson Cooper and said, "Anderson! Anderson!" Same thing - "Candy! Candy!"

Chris: His Lifeline, yeah.

Heileman: Appealing to the Refs.

Chris: Okay, Romney's final burst of combativeness came when he was defending the content of his blind trust. But the President worked in a good line. Let's listen here:

ROMNEY: Just going to make a point. Any investments I have over the last eight years have been managed by a blind trust. And I understand they do include investments outside the United States, including in -- in Chinese companies.

Mr. President, have you looked at your pension? Have you looked at your pension?

OBAMA: I've got to say...

ROMNEY: Mr. President, have you looked at your pension?

OBAMA: You know, I -- I don't look at my pension. It's not as big as yours so it doesn't take as long.

ROMNEY: Well, let me give you some advice.

OBAMA: I don't check it that often.

ROMNEY: Let me give you some advice. Look at your pension. You also have investments in Chinese companies. You also have investments outside the United States. You also have investments through a Cayman's trust.

(CROSSTALK)

CROWLEY: We're way off topic here, Governor Romney.

Chris: What was that? Do you know more about what he's getting at there, David?

David Corn: Well, the campaign has told me this time and time again when I've asked about Bain investments and Chinese companies that they outsourced. They go, "Oh, Obama has investments outside in foreign companies." They're basically looking at his Mutual Funds and going through all the companies. He doesn't have anything major in this, though, so they're trying to come up with equivalence that doesn't really exist. And he kinda botched the point in making it.

Heileman: And can I tell you that this exchange to me was the epitome of this debate and Denver. When Gov. Romney raised the thing in Denver about the accountant and it presented a golden opportunity for the President to say "Oh, you gotta pretty good accountant," or something, the President just totally wimped on it, just stepped back and didn't do anything. Here, as soon as Romney went to the pensions, you saw Obama get up out of his chair and start walking over ther like "I am going right at this thing. I've got a pension line, I'm going to get right on this thing. I'm going to try and rip this guy's lungs out." It was the difference for me between the debates.



Chris: I like the fact that his (Obama's) synapses, if you will, that every time he gave an answer it was a Christmas tree he put up responding. And then he'd start putting the baubles on it. "And by the way, Lily Ledbetter. And by the way, Planned Parenthood. And by the way, this..." - he just adorned the tree with these answers.

David Corn: His debate performance was full of strategy. From start to finish, he knew what points he wanted to make. He found the best opportunities, and it all had this great crescendo at the end, with 47%. He waited till the very last moment, when Romney could not . . .

Chris: And he (Obama) also won both polls tonight. He won CNN's and CBS's.

John Heileman: Here again, a mirror image of the last debate. In Denver, Gov. Romney had a strategy and he executed it. President Obama did not have a strategy. In this debate, President Obama had a strategy and executed it.

. . . *snip* . . .

John Heileman: I'll tell you what we also saw tonight was the contempt between the two of them, the physicality of it, the moments when you thought they were going to get the nunchucks out and just start beating each other. (laughter)

Chris: Let me tell you something, knowing the President's contempt from you and a lot of other reporters, I think he held back.

John Heileman: There were just moments when it seethed, seethed.

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Romney's Harvest Home at Bain Reaps Profits

David Corn at Mother Jones has done it again - unearthed a video from 1985 in which a younger Mitt Romney brags about Bain "harvesting" companies to reap a profit. It was given to them by a former employee of Bain. Unbelievable! I don't know much, but I bet that even people in the business community must be just as sick of hearing about Bain Capital flipping companies for profit as we regular folk.

Romney sounds like the grim reaper, and I'm sure that's how the ex-employees of all those outsourced and ruined companies feel to this day. The Grim Reaper Romney.

Mother Jones Article Here

Mother Jones has obtained a video from 1985 in which Romney, describing Bain's formation, showed how he viewed the firm's mission. He explained that its goal was to identify potential and hidden value in companies, buy significant stakes in these businesses, and then "harvest them at a significant profit" within five to eight years.

The video was included in a CD-ROM created in 1998 to mark the 25th anniversary of Bain & Company, the consulting firm that gave birth to Bain Capital. Here is the full clip, as it appeared on that CD-ROM (the editing occurred within the original):

Mitt Romney:
TRANSCRIPT: Bain Capital is an investment partnership which was formed to invest in startup companies and ongoing companies, then to take an active hand in managing them and hopefully, five to eight years later, to harvest them at a significant profit…

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Romney Revealed ~ And He's Not Pretty

In Oscar Wilde's novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, the main character keeps up appearances to the outside world and retains his youthful beauty even while doing vile things in private. His horrifying secret lies in a painting behind locked doors, a portrait of himself that shows the depths to which he has fallen. The shocking truth is that the portrait is the real soul of Dorian Gray, while his outward demanor is used to fool people. He is living a lie.

Yesterday we got a glimpse at the real Mitt Romney behind closed doors, and the portrait it paints is not pretty. In fact, in a campaign year when we thought we couldn't be shocked anymore after the gaffes of the summer, we find ourselves suddenly transported into a weird Night Gallery that the great Rod Serling would completely understand. Mitt Romney has been revealed.


People are waking up in the U.S. to a much different Presidential race, and even the Republican candidate seems like a different man. Literally.

Background: Secret Videos Mother on Jones

After hearing a relaxed Romney talking to his wealthy peers behind closed doors in the videos on Mother Jones, it's not such a stretch to see him more clearly as a parody of a rich man, a clueless wonder prattling on about himself and us-versus-them in a Louis IV way. But even that would be too kind. It's more like the scene in Oscar Wilde's Picture of Dorian Grey when the evil portrait is revealed.

It's as if the scales have fallen from our eyes, as the Bible says. We used to see Romney as through a glass darkly, but now face to face. He is what he is, and it's not the nicely bumbling well-meaning candidate who walks like a robot or a conehead, or the "wild and crazy" husband and father who seems almost forgiveable.

Instead, we see and hear the privileged frat boy bully from Cranbrook, the one who attacked another student with scissors and slammed a door on a blind teacher. He's hideous Greg Marmalard from Animal House, all-grown-up and smoothly glib, schmoozing with his well-appointed frat brothers while dissing half the country as unworthy of his time because they refuse to vote for him. Yet he still expects loads of money from the donors because . . . well, just because he is who is he is - the fortunate son who always had everything, but has convinced himself and others that he is a self-made man. When he wins, the markets will magically go up and morning bells will chime, just because he's there in the White House, making the rest of the landed gentry and moneyed elite feel good about their taxes.

It's a nice fantasy, Mitt, but we ain't buyin it. Americans can spot a phony a mile away, and now that we see the real you, we know what always made us uneasy and distrustful of you in the first place, the reason for your low likeability ratings. This is a gut-check moment for the people, and there's more of us than 47%. Our votes do matter, Mr. Romney, even if our lives do not matter to you. We see you now.


David Corn of Mother Jones on MSNBC's Hardball

What he's really saying is that there are two Americas. There are strivers in the room, people of success, who take personal responsibility. Then 47% of the country won't take responsibility for themselves and they want a handout from government. So it was beyond dog whistles. It was beyond using welfare. And it seemed to me he was talking to people privately, a couple dozen people in the room, he was saying what he believed about half of America. He showed a lot of disdain and contempt for his fellow citizens.

Joan Walsh of Salon.com on MSNBC's Hardball

It sounds to me as if very much he believes it. I don't think he is playing a role at all . . . But the really astonishing thing . . . He is writing off, he is talking about one-half of our country with utter contempt. He's writing them off, he's talking about them as parasites and moochers. And the rare opportunity for the Democrats here is that he is talking about a large segment of the Republican base. Like it or not, there are a lot of white people, older white people in that category as well. So he's gone from stigmatizing, calling him (Obama) the Food Stamp President and doing this dog whistle stuff, to now it's just crystal clear. The country is 12% black, so if you're talking about 47%, you're talking about a lot of white people. So it's contempt for everybody. Equal Opportunity contempt. Hugely damaging.

.
Josh Barro on Bloomberg

You can mark my prediction now: A secret recording from a closed-door Mitt Romney fundraiser, released today by David Corn at Mother Jones, has killed Mitt Romney's campaign for president.
. . . Romney is the most opaque presidential nominee since Nixon, and people have been reduced to guessing what his true feelings are. This video provides an answer: He feels that you're a loser. It's not an answer that wins elections.

Jonathan Chait on New York Magazine

. . . the video exposes an authentic Romney as a far more sinister character than I had imagined. Here is the sneering plutocrat, fully in thrall to a series of pernicious myths that are at the heart of the mania that has seized his party. He believes that market incomes in the United States are a perfect reflection of merit. Far from seeing his own privileged upbringing as the private-school educated son of an auto executive-turned-governor as an obvious refutation of that belief, Romney cites his own life, preposterously, as a confirmation of it. (“I have inherited nothing. Everything I earned I earned the old fashioned way.”)
. . . The revelations in this video come to me as a genuine shock. I have never hated Romney. I presumed his ideological makeover since he set out to run for president was largely phony, even if he was now committed to carry through with it, and to whatever extent he’d come to believe his own lines, he was oblivious or naïve about the damage he would inflict upon the poor, sick, and vulnerable. It seems unavoidable now to conclude that Romney’s embrace of Paul Ryanism is born of actual contempt for the looters and moochers, a class war on behalf of his own class.

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Bombshell ~ The Romney Tapes on Mother Jones

That Mitt Romney is going down in flames is a given now thanks to some bombshell videos that will hasten Mitt's journey to Loserville. Or should I say "Potterville."

The videos given to Mother Jones and released yesterday show Romney at a fundraiser talking about Obama and the voters in the worst possible way imaginable. He condescendingly insults not only the President, but 47% of the country. Vile. Corrupt. Self-Serving. I can think of so many descriptions.

I started out a few months ago rather liking Mitt and almost sorry that he was the butt of every joke. As time went on I found him entertaining because he was such a train-wreck of a candidate. But after last night, I loathe him in a way that makes my skin crawl. It's obvious why he and Lyin' Ayn Ryan are like father and son - no feelings for society, out for themselves, lacking empathy for anyone in trouble, and not good for our country.

There are more videos to come, so tomorrow should be interesting!!!

Mother Jones Has the Scoop

Mother Jones has obtained video of Romney at this intimate fundraiser—where he candidly discussed his campaign strategy and foreign policy ideas in stark terms he does not use in public—and has confirmed its authenticity. To protect the confidential source who provided the video, we have blurred some of the image, and we will not identify the date or location of the event, which occurred after Romney had clinched the Republican presidential nomination.
[UPDATE: After a restriction was lifted, Mother Jones reported that this fundraiser was held at the Boca Raton home of controversial private equity manager Marc Leder on May 17.]

...There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent 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. That that's an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what…These are people who pay no income tax.

...There is a perception, 'Oh, we were born with a silver spoon, he never had to earn anything and so forth.' Frankly, I was born with a silver spoon, which is the greatest gift you can have: which is to get born in America.

..."Had he (my father) been born of Mexican parents, I'd have a better shot of winning this."

...I have a very good team of extraordinarily experienced, highly successful consultants, a couple of people in particular who have done races around the world. I didn't realize it. These guys in the US—the Karl Rove equivalents—they do races all over the world: in Armenia, in Africa, in Israel. I mean, they work for Bibi Netanyahu in his race. So they do these races and they see which ads work, and which processes work best, and we have ideas about what we do over the course of the campaign. I'd tell them to you, but I'd have to shoot you.

...my own view is that if we win on November 6th, there will be a great deal of optimism about the future of this country. We'll see capital come back and we'll see—without actually doing anything—we'll actually get a boost in the economy. If the president gets reelected, I don't know what will happen. I can—I can never predict what the markets will do. Sometimes it does the exact opposite of what I would have expected. But my own view is that if we get a "Taxageddon," as they call it, January 1st, with this president, and with a Congress that can't work together, it's—it really is frightening.

Obama Campaign Response

“It’s shocking that a candidate for President of the United States would go behind closed doors and declare to a group of wealthy donors that half the American people view themselves as ‘victims,’ entitled to handouts, and are unwilling to take ‘personal responsibility’ for their lives,” Jim Messina, Obama for America campaign manager, said in a statement. “It’s hard to serve as president for all Americans when you’ve disdainfully written off half the nation.”

Mitt Romney wants to help all Americans struggling in the Obama economy. As the governor has made clear all year, he is concerned about the growing number of people who are dependent on the federal government, including the record number of people who are on food stamps, nearly one in six Americans in poverty, and the 23 million Americans who are struggling to find work.
~ Statement from Romney Spokesperson Gail Gitcho


Mitt's Lame Apology

"Well, um, It's not elegantly stated let me put it that way I'm speaking off the cuff in response to a question and I'm sure I can state it more clearly in a more effective way than I did in a setting like that and so I'm sure ill point that out as time goes on."

Full Transcript Here