BY WESLEY P. HESTER

In perhaps his most scathing TV ad to date, Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney is labeling President Barack Obama dishonest in a 30-second spot airing in Virginia and other key swing states.

Titled “No Evidence,” the ad pushes back on aggressive attacks from the president on Romney’s private sector experience specifically accusing him of outsourcing jobs while at Bain Capital.

“When a president doesn’t tell the truth, how can we trust him to lead?” the narrator asks, before quoting from articles by independent fact-checkers that have debunked claims in Obama’s ads on the subject.

“Candidate Obama lied about Hillary Clinton,” the narrator adds before a 2008 clip of Clinton, now the president’s Secretary of State, saying, “so shame on you Barack Obama.”   

The narrator concludes: “But America expects more from a president. Obama’s dishonest campaign: Another reason America has lost confidence in Barack Obama.”

“Mitt Romney’s ad is based on the false premise that he left Bain Capital in February 1999, an assertion that today’s Boston Globe and official documents filed with the SEC and the State of Massachusetts demonstrate is just not true,” responded Obama campaign spokeswoman Lis Smith.

“The fact is that Romney, despite his big Bain lie, served as president and CEO of his corporate buyout firm until three years later and is responsible for the American jobs that were shipped overseas during that period,” she added.