Mitt Romney Backtracks After Camera Captures His Insulting Comments

Ouch, Mitt Romney. That wasn't well played.

Some secretly-captured videos from a $50,000 a plate dinner in Boca Raton last May shows the presidential hopeful spouting a few statements that a lot of Americans can take some serious offense to.

“Forty-seven percent of Americans pay no income tax. There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you name it…”

After continuing to discuss Obama voters’ sense of “entitlement” to luxury items like food and healthcare, and lumping the 47percent of voters who are expected to vote for Obama with people who don’t pay taxes (because if the number match, then clearly the two groups are the one), he also mentions:

“And so my job is not to worry about those people. I’ll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.”

Stephen Colbert put it best when he aired parts of the clip on his show, "The Colbert Report."

“But the liberal hounds of course went after Mitt like a poor person going after a basic need," he deadpans.

Romney was called into the hot seat to defend his statements.

“And do you worry you’ve offended this 47 percent who you mentioned?” asks an audience member.

“Well, uh, it’s not eloquently stated let me put it that what I’m speaking off the cuff... but it’s a message that I’m going to carry and continue to carry,” Romney maintains.

“Of course, it’s a message that he wants to carry. The only problem, is that calling half of America mindless moochers wasn’t said elegantly,"  notes Colbert.

He also requests that the persons who were responsible for secretly taping him would release the entire video, so that his response might be better understood. And so they did: you can watch it here, but don't expect any miracles that were cut from the first beside a few close-up shots of plants and wine glasses.

You can watch the important sections of the taped speech, Romney’s rebuttal, and Stephen Colbert’s quippy take on it in the following videos, or read the full transcript here.