Tagg Romney: Obama made me want to ‘take a swing at him’ in debate

Tagg Romney, the eldest son of Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, said Wednesday that he was angered when President Obama insinuated that his father was lying during some of the second presidential debate’s more heated moments, and wanted to “take a swing” at the president.

Asked by North Carolina radio host Bill LuMaye how he reacted to Obama calling his father a liar, Tagg Romney said he wanted to “jump out of [his] seat and … to rush down the debate stage and take a swing at him.”

{mosads}”But you know you can’t do that because, well, first because there’s a lot of Secret Service between you and him,” Romney continued. “But also because this is the nature of the process, they’re going to do everything they can do to try to make my dad into someone he’s not. We signed up for it. We’ve gotta kind of sit there and take our punches and then send them right back the other way.”

The fiery second debate between the two candidates featured a number of tense moments, including a terse exchange on the administration’s handling of Libya and an intense back-and-forth on energy.

“You will get your chance in a moment,” Romney told Obama at one point.

Tagg Romney added that his father gets nervous before the debates.

“He’s terrified before he gets out there,” Romney said. “Terrified is too strong of a word, but he’s like anybody. He gets butterflies a little bit.”

Tagg’s younger brother Josh was asked about his comments Thursday during a taping of ABC’s “The View,” but downplayed the rhetoric.

“That brother has slugged me a couple of times; I am sure President Obama has nothing to worry about,” said Josh Romney. “You really don’t like to see your dad get beat up by the media or by President Obama, or whatever it is. That was just something he was saying off-the-cuff, and I assure you he didn’t mean it.”

Listen to Romney’s interview here:

This post was updated at 12:22 p.m.