Clinton: Obama gave Canada 'wink-wink' on NAFTA
by Glenn Thrush and Rick Pearson
TOLEDO, OH -- Hillary Clinton -- fighting to hold a slim lead in Ohio -- is seizing on a leaked memo indicating that a top Barack Obama adviser assured Canadian officials the candidate's attacks on NAFTA were motivated by primary politics.
The former first lady -- ratcheting up her battle with the press -- suggested the Canada story would be getting more attention if the memo had referred to her campaign's activities.
Speaking to reporters here this morning, Clinton said, "If you come to Ohio and you go give speeches that are very critical of NAFTA... and then we find out that your chief economic adviser has gone to a foreign government and basically done the old wink-wink – 'Don’t pay any attention, this is just political rhetoric' -- I think that raises serious questions."
Peering at the 50 or so reporters packed into a small hotel conference room here, she added: "I would ask you to look at this story and substitute my name for Sen. Obama’s name and see what you would do with this story… Just ask yourself [what you would do] if some of my advisers had been having private meetings with foreign governments."
The memo, written by a Canadian embassy official and leaked to the AP, claims that the campaign's top economic adviser Austan Goolsbee assured him that Obama's anti-NAFTA remarks "should not be taken out of context and should be viewed as more about political positioning than a clear articulation of policy plans."
Goolsbee has denied that he made the comments attributed to him. Obama has denied it, too.
