Axelrod: We'll keep pounding outside spending and foreign money

Axelrod: We'll keep pounding outside spending and foreign money

The White House will keep up its assault on outside spending by conservative groups and will continue to press the case about the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's foreign money, despite hints of retreat on the latter issue, senior adviser David Axelrod told me in an interview this afternoon.

Axelrod also took a shot at the fact-checkers at multiple news orgs who have concluded there is no evidence for the White House's broadside at the Chamber, suggesting fact-checkers should be "directing their ire" at the Chamber, rather than "in the wrong direction."

"The fact that these front groups are spending hundreds of millions of dollars from undisclosed sources on attack ads to influence these elections is a serious issue and we're going to continue to raise it," Axelrod told me.

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"The debate is being directed that way as a kind of misdirection play by Karl and others who obviously don't want the focus on where their $150 million or $200 million is coming from," Axelrod said.

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"The phenomenon is beginning to be unmasked," he said. "That's what makes karl and others so nervous. They thought they could operate under cloak of darkness and now a bright light is being shown."

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"The whole point of disclosure is that you don't really know whether people are complying with the rules unless you know what they're doing," he said. "Do any of the fact checkers have access to the fund that the chamber is using to pay for its 75 million in political activity? If they don't, it seems to me they're directing their ire in the wrong direction."