The Regime sent White House Senior Adviser Dan Pfeiffer to appear on all five major Sunday morning news shows in an all too obvious attempt to do damage control after an exceptionally bad week of exploding scandals. He did this by going on the offense against Republicans, and alleging that all inconvenient facts were “irrelevant.”
“Irrelevant” was Pfeiffer’s refrain: “The law is irrelevant” on the IRS scandal, he told ABC’s This Week; it’s “a largely irrelevant fact” where Obama was during the Benghazi attacks, he told Fox News Sunday; it’s also “largely irrelevant” who edited the Benghazi talking points to create a misleading picture of the attacks.
On Meet the Press, he told host David Gregory what the Republican playbook is: because they “lack a positive agenda” they’re trying to “drag Washington into a swamp of partisan fishing expeditions, trumped up hearings, and false allegations.”
“We’re not going to let that happen”, he assured Gregory. “The president’s got business for the American people.” I guess since he was on NBC, he figured he could get away with such hyper-partisan spewage.
But he had a harder sell on CBS with Bob Schieffer, who recently referred to the Regime as “Dumb and Dumber”.
Pfeiffer dropped the same exact rhetorical turdball on Schiffer, “This is the Republican playbook, here, which is, when they don’t have a positive agenda, they try to drag Washington into a swamp of partisan fishing expeditions, trumped up hearings, and false allegations.”
Schieffer told Pfeiffer his response reminded him of how the Nixon White House responded to Watergate, lol. Not exactly the reaction he was hoping for.
Schieffer also noted toward the end of the interview that the decision to send Susan Rice to go on the Sunday shows with the incorrect talking points was basically a “PR” stunt. And he asked a question that a lot of us have had, ” Why did you do that? Why didn’t the Sec. of State come out and tell us what she knew, and if she knew nothing, tell us, ‘we don’t know, yet.’ Why didn’t the White House Chief of Staff come out?”, he continued. “And I mean this as no disrespect to you, but why are YOU here today? Why isn’t the White House Chief of Staff here to tell us what happened?”
Yikes, this one did not go smoothly at all.
On ABC’s This Week, host George Stephanopoulos asked Pfeiffer about the controversy surrounding Benghazi talking points. Pfeiffer had no answer as to why the talking points showed more extensive changes than Jay Carney claimed, last November, so he went on the offensive, arguing that Republicans owe UN Ambassador Susan Rice an apology.
There are hacks, toadies, lackeys, flunkies, and yes-men – and then there are guys like Jay Carney and Dan Pfeiffer who are in a class by themselves.
Behold the audacity of mendacity.
On Fox News Sunday, host Chris Wallace reminded Pfeiffer that Obama didn’t really talk with Secretary Clinton, Secretary Panetta, or Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, on the night of 9/11/2012. “He was talking to his national security staff,” Pfeiffer insisted without naming names.
Asked about whether the president entered the Situation Room, Pfeiffer says, “I don’t remember what room the president was in on that night, and that’s a largely irrelevant fact.”
Pfeiffer then argues that Wallace’s questions about the president’s handling of the Benghazi terror attack are “offensive.”
“The premise of your question”, he huffed, “is that somehow, there was something that could have been done, differently”….
Why yes. That’s exactly the premise of his question. And there indeed were things that could have and should have been done differently, as an administration official who was part of the Benghazi response told CBS News, last week, regarding the Foreign Emergency Support Team: “I wish we’d sent it.”
The list of mea culpas by Obama administration officials involved in the Benghazi response and aftermath include: standing down the counterterrorism Foreign Emergency Support Team, failing to convene the Counterterrorism Security Group, failing to release the disputed Benghazi “talking points” when Congress asked for them, and using the word “spontaneous” while avoiding the word “terrorism.”
The Foreign Emergency Support Team known as “FEST” is described as “the US Government’s only interagency, on-call, short-notice team poised to respond to terrorist incidents worldwide.” It even boasts hostage-negotiating expertise. With U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens reported missing shortly after the Benghazi attacks began, Washington officials were operating under a possible hostage scenario at the outset. Yet deployment of the counterterrorism experts on the FEST was ruled out from the start. That decision became a source of great internal dissent and the cause of puzzlement to some outsiders.
Thursday, an administration official who was part of the Benghazi response told CBS News: “I wish we’d sent it.”
There were no mea culpas coming from Pfeiffer, however because the Regime thinks they have a way out of Benghazi culpability. Carney and Pfeiffer have both made a big deal about the so called “doctored emails” which he blamed on Republicans, but there is no evidence that a Republican deliberately doctored any emails. We don’t know who Jonathan Karl’s source for the emails he released were, but we do know that the source had seen the original emails but was not permitted by the White House to make copies of them.
This is how Karl says he reported the contents of that e-mail:
…quoting verbatim a source who reviewed the original documents and shared detailed notes:
“We must make sure that the talking points reflect all agency equities, including those of the State Department, and we don’t want to undermine the FBI investigation. We thus will work through the talking points tomorrow morning at the Deputies Committee meeting.”
The source was not permitted to make copies of the original e-mails. The White House has refused multiple requests – from journalists, including myself, and from Republican leaders in Congress – to release the full e-mail exchanges.
The differences in the two versions are being taken by some as evidence that my source sought to intentionally mislead about the extent of State Department involvement in changing the talking points. The version I obtained makes specific reference to the State Department, while the version reported by CNN references only “all of the relevant equities” and does not single out State.
The White House that’s blaming Republicans and accusing them of “fabricating” emails could clear all of this up by just releasing the original emails. They have chosen not to do that. Instead, they’re adding to the cover-up. Jay Carney should be very, very careful with future actions. Up to now his statements have been excusable as doing his boss’ bidding. Accusing people of fabricating evidence in an ongoing investigation is a very serious charge and could open him up to charges of his own, perhaps obstruction of justice or something along those lines.
This line of attack is a Media Matters standby, by the way – find one flaw, one discrepancy that can be blamed on the enemy (Republicans) and use it to shoot down their whole argument. Because there was a discrepancy between some of the talking points that were released, and the White House version, the White House is now somehow totally exonerated? That’s the Empire’s story, and they’re sticking to it.
Chris Wallace agreed to disagree, but should have followed up with – how about telling your boss to release all of the emails, then? He missed a huge opportunity, there..
You can watch Utah Congressman Jason Chaffetz respond to that interview, here.
Trey Gowdy appeared on Fox and Friends Weekend to talk about the scandal eruptions.
He noted that there’s a an Oversight and Reform hearing scheduled for this Wednesday, which should be awesome because there are some firebrands on that committee (Gowdy of course, chief among them.) His message on the House responses to scandals, so far – be patient. Congress has to be disciplined in how they go forward. But they are determined to get answers.
The one area where Pfeiffer feigned outrage at someone besides Republicans was the IRS scandal, which is killing the Regime from a PR standpoint. So Pfeiffer pretended that the very idea of the IRS targeting the very “teabaggers” his boss and media flunkies have been demonizing for the last four years is horribly offensive to them.
OMG, this is such an outrage, there’s no excuse! Who ever heard of such a thing?! That was just awful awful awful bad stuff we would never condone…
It’s as if suddenly the tea party conservatives who have been *cough* victimized by two rogue agents in Cincinnati *cough*(who btw, Obama heroically vowed will be “hunted down” and brought to justice just like the Benghazi terrorists) are beloved citizens the Regime wants to protect. It’s really touching how shocked and offended they are about this. And how eager they are to get to the bottom of it.
They might want to check out this Drudge headline, though: Anonymous Cincinnati IRS official: “Everything comes from the top.”
SEE ALSO:
Jonathan Strong, National Review: Pfeiffer Stretches the Truth on Benghazi Emails
On the Sunday shows today, White House senior adviser Dan Pfeiffer sought to discredit criticism over how the infamous Benghazi talking points were scrubbed of references to terrorism by focusing on the differences between how ABC News described a single White House email and its actual text:
Here’s the evidence that proves the Republicans are playing politics with this: They received these emails months ago, didn’t say a word about it, didn’t complain, confirmed the CIA director . . . right after that. And then last week, a Republican source provided to Jon Karl of ABC News a doctored version of the White House email that started this entire fury. After 25,000 pieces of paper that were provided to Congress, they have to doctor an email to make political hay, you know they’re getting desperate here.
This is wrong in four ways.
Keep reading at the link.
Hot Air: About those “doctored” Benghazi e-mails…
The incorrect versions – and they were inaccurate quotes – were not generated by GOP operatives. They were extracted by ABC’s Jon Karl from notes taken by attendees at the original meeting when the White House refused to initially allow anyone to have copies which could have been used for full referencing. ABC went with the notes, being the closest thing anyone had to an official record, and the GOP worked off those notes. But even then, the “doctoring” wasn’t nearly as significant as the Democrats are making it out to be.
You know what’s scary? High officials at the White House approved of Pfeiffer’s talking points, Sunday.
And they wonder why people don’t trust them.
Nice Deb 