Yesterday before the Super Bowl, Bill O’Reilly sat with President Obama for a predictable interview as President Obama blamed Fox News for his travails. Monday-morning quarterbacking would probably say Obama should have skipped the O’Reilly interview. He came off totally on defense and at times was clearly doing everything possible to avoid inquiry. You can watch the whole thing here if you have 10 minutes to kill.
Between House Minority Leader Pelosi’s dubious appearance with Jon Stewart on the Daily Show and Obama’s interview yesterday, Democrat leadership looks lost, incompetent, and evasive.
However, President Obama struggles with something far more serious: integrity. After all, he was awarded the “Lie of the Year” for 2013 and according to the Washington Post delivered several more lies during his fifth State of the Union just last week.
He struggled yet again when faced with tough inquiry yesterday – further eroding confidence but more importantly, credibility. As reported by Fox News,
President Obama adamantly rejected the suggestion that the IRS was used for political purposes by singling out Tea Party groups seeking tax exemption. “That’s not what happened,” he said. Rather, he said, IRS officials were confused about how to implement the law governing those kinds of tax-exempt groups.” “There were some bone-headed decisions,” Obama conceded. But when asked whether corruption, or mass corruption, was at play, he responded: “Not even mass corruption — not even a smidgen of corruption.”
You have to laugh at how the liberal media is pursuing New Jersey Governor Chris Christie over traffic lane closures as major corruption, but Obama just blows off his IRS being used as a bludgeon against conservative groups. I would have asked him if he agrees with Senator Schumer’s assertion that efforts should be redoubled by the IRS and government agencies to attack grassroots conservative groups.
But most unnerving was the president’s response when asked about Benghazi. Obama said his administration didn’t try to “hide the ball” regarding the attacks, in which four Americans were killed including Ambassador Chris Stevens. “We revealed to the American people exactly what we understood at the time,” the president said. We all know this to be completely untrue. The terrorist attack at the US Consulate in Benghazi had nothing to do with a “spontaneous reaction to a crude anti-Islam video trailer.”
Fox News reported
Obama also claimed that the attackers were made up of a mix of people, some affiliated with terror organizations and others who were just “troublemakers.” A recent report from the Senate Intelligence Committee, though, definitively declared that individuals tied to Al Qaeda groups were involved.
Furthermore, the day after the SOTU address, Obama administration Director of National Intelligence James Clapper stated before the Senate Intelligence Committee that he finds a-+Qaida no less viable than they were ten years ago — far from being decimated and on the run.
On the topic of Obamacare, the president argued, “that total enrollment is now just about a month behind schedule and that young people, key to making Obamacare work, are enrolling at a good rate.”
Quite a meaningless and nebulous response, don’t you think? President Obama wouldn’t answer when asked repeatedly why he kept Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius on the job. “I try to focus not on the fumbles but on the next play,” he said.
My takeaway from the interview? Obama is a pathological liar whose disdain for the American people is evidenced in his offensive belief that he can say anything, just smile, blame someone else, and continue to disregard the rule of law. At some point, he will be held accountable.
