Enchanté: Washington Press Corps Slated To Fawn Over Obama In His First Press Conference In Five Months

It's scheduled for 1:30 (EST), which I assume means it'll kick off at the crack of 1:56.

No one asked him if he really did not know about the Petraeus affair. Chuck Todd asked a question which assumed this claim was true. Obama seemed, to me, to be careful about not repeating that claim. He said vaguely he was "withholding judgment" on the whole "process" and did not, at first, repeat the claim that he didn't know.

Chuck Todd asked some sort of inaudible follow-up which seemed to question whether the investigators were right not to tell him. (Um, again assuming he's on the level when his underlings claim he wasn't told.) At this point he said something like, "In that case you'd be asking me about why I was interfering in an FBI investigation if we had been told."

Again, that sentence does not plainly say, from his own lips (not Jay Carney's) that he wasn't told. The last sentence does seem to say that, but, as we learned with Bill Clinton, anything short of a direct, unambiguous responsive question can be parsed ("when I said we weren't told, I mean the Office of the White House was not officially informed").

Eric, I Won: Obama is back in tough-guy mode. Obama is laying down a line of smack. He's claiming that Susan Rice is just an "easy target" and he's dick waving, "If you've got a problem, come after me."

Ed Henry of FoxNews asked him directly if he specifically gave any orders to rescue those in Benghazi. He is not answering the question. He said something vaguely about giving orders to "do whatever we need to do" to "make sure they're safe."

This is a very vague answer to a question which was about ordering military action to save them.

He answers something like "If you think we didn't do everything we could, you don't know the military."

posted by Ace at 01:23 PM

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