Romney On U.S. Military: ‘Don’t Over Think How Strong We Are’

During a fundraiser with wealthy donors earlier this year, Mitt Romney didn’t appear to know how much the United States spends on its military, saying it’s “about twice as much as China.” Mother Jones released video of the entire event this afternoon, after reporting yesterday that during the event, Romney said he’s not worried about the 47 percent of Americans who support President Obama.

Seeming to argue for more military spending, Romney warned the audience not to “over think how strong we are”:

ROMNEY: [The U.S. spends] about twice as much as China, not 10 times as much like is reported. And we have responsibility for the whole world. They’re only focused on one little area of the world, the South China Sea and East China Sea that’s it. And they’re building a military at a rapid rate so this idea that we’ve always spent so much money on the military, it’s like guys, don’t over think how strong we are.

You probably know this was a couple years ago we had one of our aircraft carriers by Japan and the Chinese pulled up behind it in a diesel sub, a super quiet diesel sub pulled up behind it, it could have torpedoed and where did that kind of — our Navy is smaller in number of ships at any time since 1917.

Watch it, which appears at the beginning of this video Mother Jones posted today:

The United States spends about six times more its military than China. Romney said he wants to boost the Pentagon’s budget by $2.1 trillion over 10 years without a plan to pay for it. A recent CAP- National Security Network report warned against “exaggerat[ing] the possible threat posed by China” in arguing for more military spending back home: “Conservatives’ military-first approach, which assumes the two nations are destined for conflict, is more likely to create that reality.”