Video of Ryan pretending to wash dishes at closed soup kitchen

10/15/2012 7:00pm by 589

In the annals of fakery, this certainly ranks up there.

It seems Paul Ryan stopped by an already-empty and cleaned soup kitchen for a whopping 15 minutes, during which he and his family donned aprons and pretended to clean already-clean dishes while the media dutifully snapped photos, the Washington Post reports.

The soup kitchen president, an independent who relies of private donations for the non-partisan charity, was none too pleased with the Romney/Ryan campaign.  Not only did the campaign not have permission to drop by for a photo opp, but the photo opp was a fake.  The Ryan clan only pretend ed to clean dishes.

“The photo-op they did wasn’t even accurate. He did nothing. He just came in here to get his picture taken at the dining hall.”

Ryan had stopped by the soup kitchen for about 15 minutes on his way to the airport after his Saturday morning town hall in Youngstown. By the time he arrived, the food had already been served, the patrons had left, and the hall had been cleaned.

Upon entering the soup kitchen, Ryan, his wife and three young children greeted and thanked several volunteers, then donned white aprons and offered to clean some dishes. Photographers snapped photos and TV cameras shot footage of Ryan and his family washing pots and pans that did not appear to be dirty.

And now thanks to CBS, there’s video.  It’s embarrassing. Who would go through with something like this.  An empty soup kitchen, with clean pots and pans, so you pick up some clean ones and start washing them for the cameras.

Why should this photo opp be any different than the photo opp that is the entire Romney/Ryan campaign? It’s all about faking the voters into thinking that Mitt is now a moderate again, and that Paul Ryan doesn’t plan on phasing out Medicare and charging seniors up to $200 more in premiums a month.

The fact that Paul Ryan would show up at a soup kitchen after the poor people have already left takes you back to Mitt Romney’s comment about being “not very concerned about the very poor.”

“I’m in this race because I care about Americans,” Romney told CNN’s Soledad O’Brien this morning after his resounding victory in Florida on Tuesday. “I’m not concerned about the very poor. We have a safety net there. If it needs repair, I’ll fix it.”

“I’m not concerned about the very rich, they’re doing just fine. I’m concerned about the very heart of the America, the 90, 95 percent of Americans who right now are struggling and I’ll continue to take that message across the nation.”

The CNN anchor pressed Romney: “You just said I’m not concerned about the very poor because they have a safety net. And I think there are lots of very poor Americans who are struggling who would say that sounds odd. Can you explain that?”

But that quote isn’t entirely true.  Ryan and Romney care a lot about the very poor… when the cameras are rolling and nobody’s there.

Remember, in Ryan/Romney-land, the very poor are part of the 47%.

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@aravosis | Facebook | Google+. Editor of AMERICAblog, joint JD/MSFS from Georgetown, worked in the US Senate, World Bank, Children's Defense Fund, and as a stringer for the Economist. A frequent TV pundit, he has been on The O'Reilly Factor, Hardball, World News Tonight, Nightline & Reliable Sources. Full bio and .

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