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Illinois State Senator and U.S. Senator from Illinois 44th President of the United States Tenure
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"You didn't build that" is a phrase from a 2012 election campaign speech delivered by United States President Barack Obama on July 13, 2012, in Roanoke, Virginia. In the speech, Obama said: "Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you've got a business, you didn't build that."
The sentence "If you've got a business, you didn't build that" was publicized by his political opponents during the 2012 presidential campaign as an attack by Obama on business and entrepreneurs.[1][2][3] The Obama campaign responded that the criticisms were taking the phrase out of context, and the word "that" in the phrase was referring to the construction of "roads and bridges" in the previous sentence.[4]
Fact-checking organizations reported that Obama's remarks were incorrectly used out of context to criticize him.[4][5] The Washington Post commented that his remarks reflected the belief, common among Democrats, that successful citizens owed their success partly to public infrastructure and government spending, and that they should contribute to finance public works.[6] The Republican Party continued to use the phrase to criticize Obama throughout the 2012 presidential campaign.[7]