Rick Perry described his awkward moment in last week’s debate, when he forgot the Department of Energy was the third department he wanted to eliminate, as a “brain freeze” in an interview this afternoon.
“Unfortunately, the president of the United States has those brain freezes as well and he forgets who our friends are,” Perry said on Sean Hannity’s radio program.
In response to Rep. Steny Hoyer’s (D., Md.) remark earlier today asking, “Is this a serious proposal he’s making for a country that has very high unemployment, who’s budget deficit is larger than it’s ever been in history, which has two wars that we’re confronting and trying to bring to a conclusion?” in reference to Perry’s plan, the Texas governor said, “You better believe it, Steny.” Perry added that Americans were “serious” about cutting spending and ending insider trading among Congressional members.
Perry called the notion that Americans would pick the next president based on candidates’ debating skills an idea “a little bit foreign to me,” and noted that Obama was an excellent debater.
He also fought back against the idea that his candidacy was finished. “In the spring, everybody wrote Newt off as dead and gone,” Perry pointed out, noting that much of the first two months of his candidacy had been spent fundraising or in retail politics, and he had only recently begun rolling out specific policy proposals.