Mysterious Video Appears To Show Romney’s Private Remarks On Chinese Labor Conditions

A YouTube user with the handle “Rachel Maddow,” who is not Rachel Maddow, posted what purports to be Romney remarks secretly recorded at a closed press fundraiser.

Video available at: http://buzzfeed-video1.s3.amazonaws.com/video/2012/08/25/MittRomneyadmitstousingChineseslavelaboratBain-480x360.mp4.

Via: nycsouthpaw

The content of what a person who appears to be Mitt Romney appears to say hardly justifies the YouTube user’s incendiary headline that “Mitt Romney admits to using Chinese slave labor at Bain.” However, if the video is authentic, supporters of President Obama may be able to use the opening line (“95% of life is set up for you if you were born in this country”) to defang attacks on the President’s now infamous “you didn’t build that” gaffe.

Although the account from which the video came is named “Rachel Maddow,” the account is not associated with the MSNBC host, per her tweet. The account’s actual username is “UCQtzArTiEDsc9Suis47wjtQ” and just joined YouTube today. The video is the only video posted to the account.

Here is the YouTube user’s transcript of the purported remarks:

“95% of life is set up for you if you were born in this country. And, I remember going to ah, uh, sorry just to bore you with stories.

When I was back in my private equity days, we went to China to buy a factory there. It employed about 20,000 people. And they were almost all young women between the ages of about 18 and 22 or 23. They were saving for potentially becoming married.

And they work in these huge factories, they made various uh, small appliances. And uh, as we were walking through this facility, seeing them work, the number of hours they worked per day, the pitance they earned, living in dormitories with uh, with little bathrooms at the end of maybe 10, 10 room, rooms. And the rooms they have 12 girls per room.

Three bunk beds on top of each other. You’ve seen, you’ve seen them? (Oh…yeah, yeah!) And, and, and around this factory was a fence, a huge fence with barbed wire and guard towers. And, and, we said gosh! I can’t believe that you, you know, keep these girls in! They said, no, no, no. This is to keep other people from coming in.

Because people want so badly to come work in this factory that we have to keep them out. Or they will just come in here and start working and, and try and get compensated. So we, this is to keep people out. And they said, actually Chinese New Year as the girls go home, sometimes they decide they’ve saved enough money and they don’t come back to the factory.

And he said, so, on the weekend after Chinese New Year there will be a line of people hundreds long, outside the factory, hoping that some girls haven’t come back. And they can come to the factory. And, and so as we were experiencing this for the first time, going to see a factory like this in China some years ago.

The Bain Partner I was with turned to me and said, you know, 95% of life is settled if you are born in America. This is uh, this is an amazing land and what we have is unique and fortunately it is so special we are sharing it with the world.”

UPDATE: Another version of this video was uploaded by YouTube user “RomneyExposed” on May 31. That video only had 104 views as of this posting.

BuzzFeed senior political reporter Chris Geidner provided additional reporting for this story.