Isn’t it amazing what the President of the United States learns from watching the news?
“I wouldn’t be surprised if President Obama learned Osama bin Laden had been killed when he saw himself announce it on television.” — Jon Stewart
What’s the point of having a President who learns about everything his administration is doing from the newspapers, just like everyone else? When do you start to ask, “Is this guy stupid or just dishonest?” Given that Barack Obama seems to know so little about what’s going on in his administration that it’s starting to resemble a “Hogan’s Heroes” rerun with Bo playing the role of Colonel Klink, maybe the answer is “both.”
1) Obama didn’t know we were spying on German Chancellor Angela Merkel for five years.
The White House cut off some monitoring programs after learning of them, including the one tracking Ms. Merkel and some other world leaders, a senior U.S. official said. Other programs have been slated for termination but haven’t been phased out completely yet, officials said.The account suggests President Barack Obama went nearly five years without knowing his own spies were bugging the phones of world leaders. Officials said the NSA has so many eavesdropping operations under way that it wouldn’t have been practical to brief him on all of them.
In the March 22 interview, Obama said: “There have been problems, you know. I heard on the news about this story that fast and furious, where allegedly guns were being run into Mexico and ATF knew about it but didn’t apprehend those who had sent it. Eric Holder has — the attorney general has been very clear that he knew nothing about this. We had assigned an IG, inspector general, to investigate it.”
3) Obama didn’t know the DOJ seized the AP’s phone records.
(Press Secretary) Carney later added about the scandal, “We don’t have any independent knowledge … [Obama] found out about the news reports yesterday on the road.”
4) Obama didn’t know the IRS was targeting Tea Party groups.
During a press conference with British Prime Minister David Cameron on Monday, President Obama was asked about the IRS scandal. He responded, ”I first learned about it from the same news reports that I think most people learned about this. I think it was on Friday.”
5) Obama didn’t know the Healthcare.gov website was going to fail.
In an exclusive interview with Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta asked when the President first learned about the considerable issues with the Obamacare website.Sebelius responded that it was in “the first couple of days” after the site went live October 1.
“But not before that?” Gupta followed up.
To which Sebelius replied, “No, sir.”
Here’s the latest revelation he supposedly got from MSNBC. Certainly not Fox News who contributed to this article.
President Obama says he first learned from news reports that his former secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, used a private email account during her tenure, amid reports the White House and State Department may have known as far back as last August that Clinton did not use government email.
“The same time everybody else learned it, through news reports,” Obama told CBS’ Bill Plante, in response to a question of when the president learned of Clinton’s use of a private email account for conducting government business.
His comments came as Politico.com reported that Clinton’s staff made the decision to keep the news of the emails quiet after the White House, State Department and Clinton’s personal office learned in August that House Republicans had been given information showing that Clinton used a private email account to conduct official government business.
During the CBS interview, Obama praised Clinton: “Let me just say that Hillary Clinton is and has been an outstanding public servant; she was a great secretary of state for me.”
The White House struggled Friday to respond to the Politico report.
White House spokesman Josh Earnest said Friday that a few officials noticed Clinton wasn’t using a .gov email address. However, he did not say when they noticed and if it raised any red flags. Earnest also brought up the notion that he would not be surprised if Obama learned about it from “newspapers.”
Obama senior adviser Valerie Jarret told Bloomberg News Friday morning she never received an email from Clinton’s private address and did not know if Obama or any other official did either.
According to Politico, the White House, State Department and Clinton’s personal office knew in August that the former secretary of state had used a private email to conduct official business. The State Department became aware while the agency was preparing a batch of 15,000 emails requested by House Republicans in the Benghazi investigation.
“State Department officials noticed that some of the 15,000 pages of documents included a personal email address for Clinton, and State and White House officials conferred on how to handle the revelation,” Politico wrote. “But those involved deferred to Clinton’s aides, and they decided not to respond.
It is unclear who at the White House did the conferring. Jamal Ware, spokesman for the Republican-led Select Committee on Benghazi, confirmed that he noticed Clinton was included on messages at the address hdr22@clintonemail.com when going through State Department documents in “late summer,” and then more on documents in February.
However, Ware told The Associated Press on Thursday that it wasn’t until Feb. 28, just days before the scandal broke, that the State Department acknowledged Clinton only used personal email while in office. After that, the committee, chaired by Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., announced it has subpoenaed all of Clinton’s emails relating to Benghazi – including any communications from her personal email and server, as well as texts, attachments and pictures.
The Associated Press earlier this week quoted an anonymous source saying the White House counsel’s office was also not aware of Clinton’s exclusive use of personal email during her tenure, and only found out as part of the congressional investigation.
Clinton has drawn criticism for using a private server during the four years she was a top official in Obama’s cabinet. Her use of personal emails has raised questions as to whether all important messages were secure and if they were turned over for congressional investigations and lawsuits.
She tried to dampen the growing controversy with a tweet Wednesday, saying she wanted the State Department to quickly release the emails during her time as secretary of state. But a senior State Department official told Reuters on Thursday the task would take time.
“The review is likely to take several months given the sheer volume of the document set,” the official said.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
