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Bill Burton Defends Maher Contribution--Using Romney’s Exact Words

'It's not language I would use'

Priorities USA co-founder Bill Burton defended Bill Maher's donation to the Obama-affiliated Super PAC on an Andrea Mitchell Reports segment Thursday--using Mitt Romney's words on Rush Limbaugh.

ANDREA MITCHELL: There's been a suggestion that you should return the $1 million contribution from Bill Maher, that if you're going to--if liberals are going to go after Rush Limbaugh for the outrageous things that he's said about Sandra Fluke, that you should return the contribution from Bill Maher because of things that he has said about Sarah Palin.

BILL BURTON: Well, a couple of things. First of all, obviously, some of those things were vulgar and inappropriate and said over the course of years of a comedian's life. It's not language I would use or language we would use at Priorities USA.

MITCHELL: Isn't that what Mitt Romney said about Rush Limbaugh? "Not language that I would use"?

BURTON: Right, but the notion that there is an equivalence between what a comedian has said over the course of his career and what the de facto leader of the Party said to sexually degrade a woman who engaged in an important debate of our time is crazy. There's just no similarity about what Rush Limbaugh said, lying about the argument that miss Fluke was making, a law student at Georgetown, and what a comedian has said in the past.

When asked last week about Limbaugh's remarks, Romney said the following:

ROMNEY: I'll just say this, which is, it's not the language I would have used. I'm focusing on the issues that I think are significant in the country today, and that's why I'm here talking about jobs and Ohio.