A crowd chant from a Romney-Ryan rally in Dayton, Ohio on Tuesday has become the subject of much dispute after MSNBC’s Morning Joe aired this video for panelists. Over video footage of the rally, MSNBC added text of the crowd’s chant, which they claimed was “Ryan! Ryan! Ryan!” as Paul Ryan handed the microphone over to Mitt Romney, who then told the crowd “Wait a second, wait a second: Romney, Ryan, Romney, Ryan!” MSNBC’s argument, it seems — based on Joe Scarborough’s reaction — was that Mitt Romney can’t even get his own fans to cheer for him.
But someone who attended the event told The Blaze that the crowd was actually chanting “Romney,” and that Romney was encouraging the crowd to cheer for both.
From the video clips, it’s difficult to discern what’s going on. I downloaded C-SPAN’s footage of the rally and took a look at the audio. In the disputed portions of the clip, I minimized the crowd’s cheers and boosted the audio in order to get a better look at the chants. Though it is still difficult to discern what the crowd is chanting, I hear both “Ryan!” and “Romney!” It seems to me that Romney was trying to unify these chants into “Romney, Ryan!” It also seems that MSNBC was wrong in claiming that the crowd was chanting “Ryan!”
Take a listen for yourself with audio boosted and background noise — cheers as opposed to chants — reduced in relevant portions.