A day after the Obama campaign countered Mitt Romney's strong debate performance by accusing him of playing fast and loose with the facts, President Obama threw out a doozy of his own. 

At a rally Friday in Fairfax, Va., Obama claimed Romney had outright rejected his proposal to end tax breaks for oil and gas companies. 

"He said there's no way that he'd close the loophole that gives big oil companies billions each year in corporate warfare," Obama said, in the middle of a litany of complaints on Romney's tax positions from Wednesday's debate. 

Just one problem. Romney didn't say that. 

Rather, the Republican nominee said that if tax rates are lowered as his plan calls for, the $2.8 billion in breaks for oil companies should be on the table. 

Here's what Romney said: 

"But, you know, if we get that tax rate from 35 percent down to 25 percent, why that $2.8 billion is on the table. Of course it's on the table. That's probably not going to survive (if) you get that rate down to 25 percent." 

The president, though, has been trying to recover from Wednesday's debate by casting the Republican nominee as an ideological shape-shifter. He claimed Thursday that the Romney who showed up to debate him is not the same Romney who's been showing up on the campaign trail. 

Campaign adviser David Axelrod called Romney a "serial evader" and an "artful dodger" in a conference call Thursday. 

"What we learned is that he'll say anything that makes him effective in the short term but vulnerable in the long term," Axelrod said. 

However, Romney told Fox News in an interview Thursday that the president just "wasn't happy with the response to our debate." 

He reiterated he wants to bring tax rates down while reducing deductions. "What the president's been saying and the reality are pretty far apart," Romney said.