Updated: Oct. 4, 6:25PM
Some recent video of Rep. Denny Rehberg (R-MT) shows the Senate candidate holding up and waving around this cartoon depicting President Obama as the late bloodthirsty tyrant Muammar Qaddafi.
But a Rehberg’s Senate campaign staffer said Friday that just because he’s holding the cartoon in a video captured by some Democratic trackers doesn’t mean he has any interest in the comic or what it portrays.
It’s the latest example of a tracker catching a candidate doing something he or she would probably rather not be splashed around the internet. Democrats seem to think they have something here, but the Rehberg campaign says the video just shows their candidate being nice.
An aide said Rehberg was handed the cartoon and by the man he’s talking to in the clip. “It’s not like he carries it around with him,” the aide said.
The staffer said Rehberg’s brandishing of the cartoon was “one of those situations in which you’re not going to be rude.”
“I don’t think that reflects his personal beliefs about the cartoon or anything,” he added. “That definitely does not reflect anything that Denny believes about how Obama should be portrayed.”
The video of Rehberg and the cartoon was captured by the Democratic-supporting tracking firm American Bridge. The aide said any attempt to attack Rehberg over the clip is a “far stretch to make it something out of nothing.”
Spokesman Brian Barrett offered this statement:
Denny had three Democrat trackers following him around all day and apparently this is all they got for their money. He was handed the cartoon by a constituent and then someone else asked to see it so Denny held it up. And then he put it away. That’s pretty much it. Suggesting Denny supports the cartoon because he showed it to someone is as silly as suggesting Talking Points Memo supports it because they put it on their website.
Here’s the video:
Here’s the cartoon he’s waving around:
