Man Who Shot 47% Video Revealed
"I was behind this whole thing," Scott Prouty told MSNBC’s Ed Schultz on Wednesday night.
With those words the Florida bartender revealed himself as the man that shot the 47% video, which is generally believed to have killed Mitt Romney’s campaign.
The video, which caught Romney writing off 47% of the electorate, was shot at a fundraiser at the home of a wealthy Boca Raton Republlican on May 17, 2012.
The timeline of how the tape, which Prouty filmed with a Canon camera, made its way to the public is explained in more detail at BuzzFeed.
According to the Washington Post, "The bartender said he brought a camera to the Boca Raton, Fla. fundraiser in case Romney came back to take pictures with the staff, as former president Bill Clinton had done at another event Prouty worked. ’I didn’t go there with a grudge against Romney,’ he said. ’I really had no idea he would say what he said.’"
He also said he didn’t release the video for political reasons. Prouty has no party affiliation. Instead he said he did it based on principle.
"I am registered independent," he told Schultz.
The 38-year old bartender, who lives in Florida, is a Boston native, growing up in a working class neighborhood in the city.
He was reluctant to reveal his identity prior to Wednesday because he feared that the attention would be put on him, not on Romney.
"He said he struggled for two weeks with whether or not to release the video and risk his own career," the Washington Post reported. "He did not have health insurance. After wrestling with the decision, he decided it would be cowardly not to release the video: ’I went down the path and never looked back.’"
He explained to Schults that he "wanted Mitt Romney’s words, and Mitt Romney’s words only" to be the focus. Now, he says, he expects "to be torn apart by the right-wing media."
The timeline of how the tape, which Prouty filmed with a Canon camera, is explained in more detail at BuzzFeed.
Though Prouty remained private, he wasn’t anonymous. The Huffington Post tonight reported of meeting with him before the final Presidential debate in a Florida bar.
"He was pondering whether to go public with his role in making the video and ultimately decided he didn’t want to become a distraction, and instead wanted the focus to remain on the remarks themselves. He climbed on his motorcycle and sped off, without a helmet," the Huffington Post reported.
"After deciding to release the video, Prouty made it his mission to get the film clips out there. "I decided I was going to make a 24-hour a day push to make sure it went as far and wide as it possibly, possibly could go," he explained. ’It’s been a long journey for sure. A lot of people think I just sent it to the news media on a disc or something and then forgot about it. I had been pounding it.’
When Prouty talked about the film’s rollout, he sounded like any indie film director looking for word-of-mouth magic. "I wanted to have a build up," he said. "I wanted to have it viral as much as I could possibly get it viral. And then I was hoping obviously a serious reporter could jump on it at the right time [and] make it pop. ... I wish I almost did it a little bit later because I think it would have been more crushing. But it all worked out obviously."
