Awkward: Obama Speech at Fort Bliss Met With Silence or Tepid Applause (Video)

Via Neil Munro, of The Daily Caller:

President Barack Obama was greeted with fleeting applause and extended periods of silence as he offered profuse praise to soldiers and their families during an Aug. 31 speech in Fort Bliss, Texas.

His praise for the soldiers — and for his own national-security policies — won cheers from only a small proportion of the soldiers and families in the cavernous aircraft-hanger.

The audience remains quiet even when the commander-in-chief thanked the soldiers’ families, and cited the 198 deaths of their comrades in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The audience’s reaction was so flat that the president tried twice to elicit a reaction from the crowd.

“Hey, I hear you,” he said amid silence.

The selected soldiers who were arrayed behind the president sat quietly throughout the speech.

CNN and MSNBC ended their coverage of the speech before it was half-over.

He did get some  loud reactions when he did the obligatory name-checking of the soldiers’ brigades at the beginning of the speech, but that is expected  between rival military units. There were many painfully obvious applause lines in this speech that were met with stone cold silence. Perhaps because, in many respects, it was a campaign speech.

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I wonder if this has anything to do with it… Or this? Or this?

I’m not going to offer a comparison video showing how the troops reacted to President Bush with great enthusiasm when he spoke to them – seems too cruel.

SEE ALSO:

This powerful rebuke of Clinton and Obama from the heart of a mother via Gateway Pundit, might also help explain their lack of enthusiasm.

UPDATE:

Gateway Pundit: Horrible… Obama Tells Troops That $500 Billion in Defense Cuts (That He Proposed in January) Are Not His Fault

Linked by Michelle Malkin, thanks!