Just a week ago, billionaire Foster Friess was about as close to Rick Santorum (his choice for president) as a person can get: Friess introduced Santorum at CPAC, standing in front of the GOP base in a signature Santorum sweater vest and extolling the virtues of the man he’s spending a fortune to keep in the race. When he was finished, Santorum came out on stage with his family and launched into a stump speech.
You may not catch a scene like that again any time soon. After Friess dropped his aspirin bomb on MSNBC Thursday, Santorum set about getting as far away from Friess as he can (while still relying on boatloads of his cash to fund TV ads, of course).
Just hours after Friess’ appearance on MSNBC, reporters were dogging Santorum about the comment. Santorum told them what he told cable news shows on Thursday night and Friday morning: Friess? He’s just a jokester and he’s not part of my campaign.
That’s technically true, of course. Friess is a major backer of Santorum’s Super PAC over which Santorum has no direct control. But as the scene at CPAC shows, Friess has been pretty close to Santorum right along.
Nevertheless, Santorum told CBS News that asking him to comment on Friess’ opinions is like asking President Obama to comment on the controversial Rev. Jeremiah Wright sermons.
Here’s Santorum on CBS Friday morning talking to host Charlie Rose (as transcribed by Buzzfeed):
“Look, this is what you guys do. You don’t do this with President Obama…Hold on Charlie, when you quote a supporter of mine who tells a bad off-color joke and somehow I am responsible for that, that is gotcha.”
“In fact, with President Obama, what you did was you went out and defended him against someone who sat in a church for, for 20 years and defended him, that he can’t possibly believe what he listened to for 20 years…It’s a double standard I’m going to call you on it. The fact is, I’m here in Detroit and we’re focused on the economy and jobs. We’re going to continue doing it.”
So that’s one tactic for Santorum to use: blame the media.
The other is to step way back from Friess. Santorum’s doing a lot of that today, despite Friess’ public apology.
Here’s a video reel of what that looked like over the last 24 hours:
