Joe Soptic, who has appeared in an anti-Romney ad before, links the loss of his job and health benefits at a plant in Kansas City, Missouri, to his wife Ilyona succumbing to stage four cancer in the new commercial titled 'Understands.' Mr Soptic says Romney doesn't know what his private equity firm did to workers, 'and further, I don't think he's concerned.'
However, it has come to light that Mrs Soptic had her own health insurance from her employer for years after her husband was laid off.
Furthermore, the plant closed in 2001 - when Romney was no longer involved in the daily operation of the company - and Mrs Soptic died five years later in 2006.
Even nonpartisan observers are shocked at the half-truths and omissions in the ad, though the Obama campaign has refused to distance itself from the story.
CNN says the ad is 'not accurate.' The Washington Post's Fact Checker gave the commercial 'four Pinoccios,' the lowest possible truth rating, calling it a 'whopper' of a lie.
The commercial was released on Tuesday by Priorities USA Action, the super PAC supporting the president's reelection campaign. The president can officially disavow the attack by saying it was produced by an independent group, but the PAC is run by two former White House aides and other close allies.
Point-by-point, the one minute advert's omissions and deceptions:
- Romney did not close the steel mill
- Bain Capital's investment did not shut down GST Steel
- Mrs Soptic did not lose her healthcare because her husband lost his job
- Mrs Soptic died five years after the plant shut down
The story centers around Mr Soptic, a 62-year-old lifelong Democrat and union supporter, who worked at GST Steel in Kansas City for more than 20 years.
He has come forward as a political partisan and the Obama campaign has tried to make him the face of the white working-class Midwesterner who was a victim of Romney's 'vulture capitalism.'
This is the second attack ad against Bain that has given Mr Soptic a starring role. He was first seen in a video about the closure of his steel plant that was released in May.
However brutal Mr Soptic's claims are, the facts tell a different story.
Romney did not close the steel mill
Mr Soptic, though, blames the plant closure directly on the presumptive Republican nominee.
'I don't think Mitt Romney knows what he has done to people's lives by closing the plant. I don't think he realizes that people's lives have completely changed,' he says in the ad.
In 1999, Romney left Bain Capital to run the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics. He was no longer at the company when GS Industries went bankrupt in 2001 in the face of mounting losses.
He formally left Bain for good in 2002.
When Mrs Soptic died in 2006, Romney was governor of Massachusetts and hadn't been in charge of Bain for seven years.
Bain Capital's investment did not shut down GST Steel
'Mitt Romney and Bain Capital made millions for themselves and then closed this steel plant,' a dramatic headline in the ad reads.
The real story is much more complex.
Bain Capital was one of several investors that paid $80million to buy the plant from Armco in 1993.
At the time it was struggling. Armco lost $640million that year. The American steel industry was in the midst of massive shutdowns and struggles as they lost ground to cheaper foreign imports, the Wall Street Journal reports.
Bain folded the Kansas City plant, GST Steel, into a company called GS Industries, which made $1billion in revenues by 1996.
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