Boehner Calls Romney 'Very Likeable', Says Americans Won't Elect 'a Loser'

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Speaker of the House John Boehner appeared on CNN's State of the Union to talk about Mitt Romney's chances in the general election. He called Romney a "very likeable person," but said he hasn't spoken with him recently. He did say they have been playing phone tag. "I have not talked to him. I try to avoid talking to all the candidates in the primary. Now, he's the guy. We've traded some voice mails," Boehner said. He added that he didn't think American's would begrudge Romney's business success. "The American people don't want to vote for a loser," he said. "They don't want to vote for someone who hasn't been successful." On who Boehner thinks Romney should choose to be his Vice President, Boehner said, "whoever [Romney] is happy with. There are a lot of people that I like, but it this is a personal choice for Governor Romney." 

Obama campaign advisor Robert Gibbs appeared on NBC's Meet the Press and attacked Mitt Romney's economic policies, echoing similar statements David Axelrod made last week. Gibbs said that, "[Romeny]'s not a job creator. When he was governor of Massachusetts, they were 47th out of 50 in job creation. His experiences in downsizing and outsourcing jobs and bankrupting companies and walking away with a lot of money for himself." Gibbs compared Romney's economic policies to George Bush's in the same way Axelrod did on his tour of the Sunday shows last week, saying, "His economic ideas are the failed economic ideas that we tried for eight years." Gibbs later said Romney's biggest criticism of Obama's economics boils down to, "You didn’t clean up our mess fast enough.”

Osama bin Laden was a main talking point on Sunday, considering it's the one year anniversary of his death. Senior Romney adviser Ed Gillespie also appeared on Meet the Press and responded to remarks VP Joe Biden made saying Romney may not have acted to killed Osama bin Laden or saved General Motors Gillespie was asked to respond to a clip of Biden's speech, and called it, "one of the reasons President Obama has become one of the most divisive presidents in American history." Gillespie chastised the Obama campaign for taking, "something that was a unifying event for all Americans – an event that Gov. Romney congratulated him and the military and the intelligence analysts in our government for completing the mission in terms of killing Osama bin Laden – and he’s managed to turn it into a divisive partisan political attack.” Gillespie went on to call the attack "a bridge too far," and argued that Romney, or any president, would have done the same thing as Obama did when dealing with Osama bin Laden. 

During his interview, Robert Gibbs responded to the controvery during his segment saying, “I don’t think it’s clear that he would,” act the same way. “Again, he criticized Barack Obama a few years ago when Barack Obama said if we have actionable intelligence about a high-value target – and let’s be clear: nobody was bigger, nobody was a more high-value target than Osama bin Laden.” 

Gibbs' interview on Meet the Press can be watched here: 

Gillespie's appearance can be viewed here: 

White House counterterrorism advisor John Brennan appeared on Fox News Sunday to talk about the one year anniversary of Osama bin Laden's death. When asked by host Chris Wallace why the White House wouldn't release the bin Laden death pictures, Brennan said, "There is no doubt whatsoever that in Laden is dead... What we don’t want to do is to put out anything that is going to unnecessarily incite emotions on this issue." Asked for his thoughts on the "what would Romney have done?" controversy, Brennan said, "I don’t do politics. I’m not involved in the campaign. All I know is that the president made the decision to carry out the raid on bin Laden when he was presented with the circumstantial evidence that bin Laden was there. By all accounts, it was a gutsy call." 

Brennan also appeared on State of the Union, where he spoke on the sate of American security a year after Osama Bin Laden's death. He said they are working with countries in the middle east to locate the current leaders of Al Queda.

This article is from the archive of our partner The Wire.