Romney in comment gaffe over poor

Friday, February 03, 2012 - 07:28 AM

US presidential hopeful Mitt Romney said today he misspoke when he stated he was not very concerned about poor people.

In an interview with Nevada political reporter Jon Ralston, Mr Romney said his comments were an accidental “misstatement” of a position that he had repeated throughout his presidential campaign.

The front-runner in the Republican nomination race had said in a CNN interview that he was “not very concerned about the very poor” because they have an “ample safety net”.

Mr Romney has repeatedly said he is focused primarily on helping middle-class Americans hurt by the bad economy.

He said he gave “thousands of interviews” and on that occasion he simply got it wrong.