Conservative media outlets were up in arms Monday over a portion of President Obama’s Friday campaign speech in Roanoke, Va., in which he suggested successful business owners often got where they are thanks to help from others.
As the screen introduced viewers to Obama’s “war on success,” an aggrieved Fox Business host Stu Varney detailed the president’s “shocking point of view”:
“If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help,” Obama said. “Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business — you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.”
The line is a variation on a part of Obama’s stump speech that he has been using for months, but Varney charged that it goes “against the essence of the American Dream” and is “European.”
“I hate to use the word,” said Varney, “but that’s a near-socialist approach to economics.”
“We don’t need to have him literally spit in our face and tell us what we’re doing that’s not worthy,” said guest Ed Butowsky. “He just spit in the face of every American that goes to work every day, entrepreneurs who take risk.”
The line also outraged Rush Limbaugh and other Fox hosts.
Watch highlights of the exchanges below:
Video also available on YouTube.
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Michael Lester
Originally from Scotland, Michael was a freelance video editor before joining TPM in the summer of 2011. He lives in New York with his wife and two cats and is a lifelong fan of The World Famous Dundee United.
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