Among the bogus claims made by Mitt Romney in last night’s debate was the howler that “half” the green energy firms the Obama administration invested “have gone out of business,” adding that “a number of them happened to be owned by people who were contributors to your campaigns.” Thing is, as quickly shown by journalists these claims are not remotely true, and now even the Romney campaign has admitted he was wrong.

ThinkProgress has the story via reporter Igor Volsky in a post headlined, “Romney Admits Pushing Misinformation in Debate“. He writes,

“[Michael] Grunwald [author of The New New Deal] estimates that less than 1 percent of green firms have gone bad in terms of dollar value.”

Volsky story includes a report of this Grunwald tweet: 

@MikeGrunwald
ICYMI: Romney camp told me (after my tweet-rants) Mitt didn’t mean to say half the #stimulus-funded green firms failed. Probably <1% so far.

Romney also singled out Tesla Motors, which designs and manufactures electric vehicles, and received a $465 million loan from the Department of Energy. Last night, he quipped, “I had a friend who said you don’t just pick the winners and losers, you pick the losers, all right?” But the company is not a loser. “Founder Elon Musk says it will accelerate its payment of the principal in the spring—and the Department of Energy isn’t complaining it’s not getting its money back.” Romney, unfortunately, has turned to rooting against an American company in his effort to unseat Obama.