CBS’s Jeff Glor confronted David Axelrod on Friday’s CBS This Morning over his most recent attack on presumptive Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney: “You said that Mitt Romney was the most secretive candidate since Richard Nixon….I think that would strike a lot of people as extreme. Do you stand by those comments?“

Glor also pressed Axelrod on the Obama campaign’s “outsourcer-in-chief” attack ads on Romney: “Fact Check, as you know, looked at this, found no evidence that Mitt Romney, while he was still running Bain Capital shipped American jobs overseas. Is it fair to keep those ads on the air?“

The journalist, along with anchor Erica Hill, interviewed the Democratic presidential campaign senior adviser eight minutes into the 7 am Eastern hour. Hill also played a little hardball with her guest in her lead question: “We just heard…the President charging Mitt Romney with playing politics over use of the word ‘tax,’ when it comes to the mandate. The President, of course, adamantly denied that it was a tax in 2009, when he was trying to sell this. The Supreme Court says otherwise. How do you reconcile that now as you try sell a tax to the American people?“

When Axelrod answered, in part, that “whatever you call it – whether you call it a mandate, whether you call it a tax – what it is is a penalty” and attacked Romney for “folding” to “Rush [Limbaugh] and the right and the guys in the Republican caucus on Capitol Hill,” the CBS anchor took him to task: “But if you say it doesn’t matter, the word that you use, then why does it matter if he [Romney] switches words, to your point?“

Glor stepped in once the Obama campaign official answered Hill’s follow-up. He lead with his hardball question on the “outsourcer-in-chief’ attack, and concluded the segment with his challenge to Axelrod. The Democratic pundit got almost a minute and a half to defend his “extreme” attack:

GLOR: David, you keep calling Mitt Romney the ‘outsourcer-in-chief’. We heard what the President said on the trail, indicating that he sent jobs overseas. Fact Check, as you know, looked at this, found no evidence that Mitt Romney, while he was still running Bain Capital shipped American jobs overseas. Is it fair to keep those ads on the air?

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