Gotcha Morning | 'You Didn't Build That'

Whenever a politician takes a three-second, out-of-context soundbite from their opponent and puts it on a loop, you should always be suspicious. That's what happened earlier this week when President Obama tried to make a point about government helping build small businesses and all the Mitt Romney campaign heard was: "If you've got a business, you didn't build that."

When Mitt Romney responded to the comments himself on the campaign trail, he made a big show of asking people who built their own businesses to stand up. But Romney also conceded that businesses do need help from "the people who provide roads, the fire, the police." This seems a bit odd since those are some of the very programs Romney has said he wants to cut back on, but he did give Obama some credit, even if it didn't end up in his official campaign videos.

ᔥ ThinkProgress

Over the last few days, Fox News has dedicated no less than 42 segments to Obama's "you didn't build that" (according to Media Matters). Talking Points Memo put together this helpful montage, which shows that Fox wasn't exactly being "fair and balanced" in their coverage.

ᔥ TPM

This episode teaches us that it doesn't really matter what the candidates say on the stump. The campaign staffers who pull out soundbites and the cable news networks that spin those soundbites into controversies often speak much louder, and to a lot more people, than the candidates themselves.