“They could have lined up with those saying, ‘Let Detroit go bankrupt. Let manufacturing just wither away,’” Clinton said at the event at Oakland University in Rochester. “They could have been on the side of those who were criticizing what they called Government Motors.”

Romney, the 2012 Republican presidential nominee, wrote a November 2008 op-ed in The New York Times titled, “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt,” arguing against the government bailout of the auto industry. “If General Motors, Ford and Chrysler get the bailout that their chief executives asked for yesterday, you can kiss the American automotive industry goodbye,” Romney said in his now-famous opening. Several critics of the bailout also derisively termed the emergency taxpayer ownership of GM in 2008 “Government Motors.”