That is his 1978 quote. I wasn’t there in 1978, but my guess is he thought King was in the march, because that’s how the story was repeated in his family. It was an MLK march, and it was for civil rights, and King had marched six days earlier, and his father had been invited.
But frankly, I don’t care what some 30-year-old Romney was thinking when he talked to some reporter in 1978.
Just as I hope nobody cares what Fred Thompson was doing in 1978.
Again, if he had just said “oops” instead of using definitions to explain it away, I would be fine with this. It may have been a family story to a certain extent. In fact, it could have been a kind of funny one after he realized the error. You, know, stories change over the years and all that. I imagine Paul Bunyan was once an ordinary man. Over the years, the stories grew and so did his size! The same can happen in families. He should have just been able to accept it was not as he had stated earlier.