Another lame excuse.
Via Politico:
Obama senior campaign adviser David Axelrod on Sunday said Republican Mitt Romney delivered a “very good performance” at the first presidential debate that was “completely un-rooted in fact” and the president was “taken aback at the brazenness” of the Republican nominee’s answers.
CBS’s “Face the Nation” host Bob Schieffer kicked off the conversation “with the obvious question — what happened?”
“The president showed up with the intent of answering questions and having a discussion, an honest discussion of where we will go as a country, and Romney showed up to deliver a performance, and he delivered a very good performance,” Axelrod said. “It was completely un-rooted in fact, it was completely un-rooted in the positions he’s taken before and he spent 90 minutes trying to undo two years of campaigning on that stage, but he did it very well.”
Schieffer followed up by asking if he was saying Romney “lied or was dishonest?”
“Well, yeah, I think he was dishonest,” Axelrod said.
“I’m saying he was dishonest in his answers, you can characterize that any way you want,” Axelrod later added.
Axelrod also addressed President Barack Obama’s performance, saying the president is his own harshest critic and “I think you can assume he’s reviewed the tape and it will inform how he handles the subsequent debates.”