2012 – media and sophisticated, nuanced liberals ridiculed Romney for bringing up terrorism in Mali.
“Mali has been taken over, the northern part of Mali by al Qaeda type individuals,” Romney said. “With Mali now having North Mali taken over by al-Qaeda, with Syria having [Bashar al-Assad] continuing to kill, to murder his own people, this is a region in tumult.”
Prior to the third and final presidential debate, Romney had received intelligence briefings from the Obama administration. It’s tradition for presidential candidates to receive these types of briefings following their nominating conventions. A former Romney adviser later confirmed to BuzzFeed that Romney had indeed been given intelligence on possible terrorist activity in Mali.
Bring on the fool parade:
“I bet Romney couldn’t point to Mali on a map,” Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas said at the time on social media.
Longtime Clinton ally and CNN contributor Paul Begala added elsewhere, “POTUS has mentioned Israel at least three times Romney has cited Mali twice. Really.”
Vox.com’s Matt Yglesias joked in a note of his own, “Romney going for the vote of single-issue Mali voters. Obama for people who don’t like Osama bin Laden.”
He added later, “Teachers unions have thrown Northern Mali into chaos.”
Politico’s Roger Simon laid into Romney particularly hard, painting a deeply unflattering portrait of the former governor’s debate performance in an article titled “Obama Takes Romney to School.”
“And there is another problem with foreign policy, which Romney demonstrated when he twice mentioned Mali,” Simon wrote. “Mali? Is Romney not aware that in an oft-quoted Roper poll sponsored by the National Geographic Society in 2006, 75 percent of American young people couldn’t find Israel on a map — which might be understandable considering it’s pretty small — but also that 50 percent couldn’t find Ohio? Or New York?”
“And he wants people to know from Mali?” he asked again.
November 22, 2015, President Obama: “We will stand with the people of Mali”.
Romney made his remarks based on intelligence briefings he had received from Obama’s own people. Romney understood what he was reading; Obama did not. Probably still doesn’t, in fact.