“What they are trying to suggest is I said Barack Obama was responsible for a plant shutdown in Janesville,” Ryan said on NBC’s “Today.” “That is not what I was saying. Read the speech. What I was saying is the president ought to be held to account for his broken promises. After our plant was shut down, he said would lead an effort to retool plants like the Janesville plant to get people back to work.”

Ryan made a reference in his speech to a GM plant in his hometown saying: “Right there at that plant, candidate Obama said: ‘I believe that if our government is there to support you … this plant will be here for another hundred years.’ That’s what he said in 2008. Well, as it turned out, that plant didn’t last another year. It is locked up and empty to this day.”

The plant was largely closed before Obama took office in early 2009.