Fact Check

Mitt Romney 'Money' Shirts

Photograph shows Mitt Romney posing with children whose shirts spell out the word 'MONEY'?

Published March 6, 2012

Claim:

Claim:   Photograph shows Mitt Romney posing with children whose shirts spell out the word "MONEY."


FALSE


Example:   [Collected via e-mail, February 2012]


I've seen this image floating around Facebook for about two weeks now. I was wondering if this is the result of photo manipulation, or if this was an honest mistake (or perhaps an intentional joke on the part of the Romney family). I can't trace the origin of this image.



 

Origins:   Former Massachusetts governor and 2012 Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney has a net worth estimated (in his own words) to be "between $150 and about $200-and-some-odd million dollars," making him one of the wealthiest U.S. presidential candidates of recent years. (CNBC rated

him third on their list of "10 Richest US Presidential Candidates," behind Steve Forbes and Ross Perot.)

Mitt Romney's financial assets (along with various finance-related comments the candidate has made during the 2012 presidential campaign) have often been the focus of political criticism, with detractors such as Republican opponent Newt Gingrich's terming the former Massachusetts governor a "'rich guy' incapable of connecting with working class Americans."

The photograph displayed above plays on that image of a wealthy, unsympathetic candidate, supposedly showing Mitt Romney being so crass as to pose with a group of children (not his own — Mitt and Ann Romney have five adult sons) wearing shirts that spell out the word 'MONEY' against the backdrop of an American flag. In fact, this picture is a digitally manipulated rearrangement of an Associated Press photograph showing off the Romney campaign logo, with the young woman on the left wearing a shirt that bears the stylized red-white-and-blue 'R' of that logo, and the rest of the children's shirts spelling out the remainder of the candidate's surname. The original AP photograph and caption were as follows:


Republican presidential candidate, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, poses for a photo with the Fisher family backstage prior to a campaign rally in Elko, Nev., Friday, Feb. 3, 2012. Campaigning throughout Nevada on Friday, Romney sought to convince weary voters that he alone had the prescriptions for what ails the country, even as the government reported that a quarter-million Americans streamed back into the work force in January.


Last updated:   6 March 2012

David Mikkelson founded the site now known as snopes.com back in 1994.

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