White House press secretary Jay Carney was trending on twitter Friday afternoon after a press conference in which he reminded reporters that Mitt Romney started the politicization of the Benghazi attacks. You see, conservatives are outraged that Carney repeated the Candy Crowley “lie” (also known as a fact in sane circles) that Obama referred to the Benghazi attacks as an “act of terror.”
Jay Carney said today, “There is the discussion about, you know, the Republicans again, and this ongoing effort that began hours of the attacks when Mitt Romney put out a press release to try to take political advantage out of these deaths, or out of the attack in Benghazi, and, in a move that was maligned even by members of his own party. And from that day forward, there has been this effort to politicize it.”
“If you look at the issue here, the efforts to politicize it were always about, you know, were we trying to play down the fact that there was an act of terror and an attack on the embassy. And the problem has always been with that assertion it is completely hollow because the President himself in the Rose Garden said this was an act of terror and he talked about it within the context of September 11th, 2001.”
This brought up the still simmering Romney debate wounds for the Right, who still to this day do not believe that President Obama used the words “act of terror” in his Rose Garden presser.
President Obama did, and it’s been factchecked relentlessly (to no avail for the right, whose epistemic closure causes them to deny all sources that aren’t lying to them). It shouldn’t matter, but since we are fighting a war with a fictional history, it’s incumbent upon me to remind everyone of the facts:
Romney said that “it took the president 14 days before he called the attack in Benghazi an act of terror.”
Obama is correct that he referred to “acts of terror” in a Sept. 12 speech in the Rose Garden.The transcript does show that Obama said in a Rose Garden speech on Sept. 12: “No acts of terror will ever shake the resolve of this great nation, alter that character, or eclipse the light of the values that we stand for.” That night, he said at a Las Vegas fundraiser: “No act of terror will dim the light of the values that we proudly shine on the rest of the world, and no act of violence will shake the resolve of the United States of America.” Obama employed the “act of terror” phrase a third time a day later at a campaign event in Colorado.
(full transcript here: Remarks by the President on the Deaths of U.S. Embassy Staff in Libya, Rose Garden, Sept 12)
The right does not believe, per an article on Michele Malkin’s Twitchy entitled, “Paging Candy Crowley: Jay Carney repeats debunked Benghazi lie from presidential debates”:
Timothy P Carne:y @TPCarney Obama did NOT say in the Rose Garden “this was an act of terror.”
3:47 PM – 10 May 2013
Janice @jcdwms: Carney said Obama used act of terror in Rose Garden. Wasn’t that the Candy Crowley lie in the 1st debate? I can’t keep up w all the lies!
L. North @LadyLNorth: LIE: Carney just said President called #Benghazi an “act of terror” in the Rose Garden.
JivinJ @JivinJehoshaph: .@PressSec is so full of it on #Benghazi – Obama never specifically called the Benghazi an “act of terror” in the Rose garden #liar
Isaac Townes @IsaacTownes: So we’re still on the Rose Garden “act of terror” thing? How long is @BarackObama gonna get away w/ claiming that bs?
S.E. Cupp ✔ @secupp: Carney says there was no attempt to “play down” terrorism angle on Benghazi. Wait, what???
Joe Bonano Jr. @Gotmade: @secupp Obama called Benghazi a terrorist attack day after in the rose garden, what????
So now the right is absolutely exploding in rage on Twitter because Jay Carney is a “liar”. #JayCarneyExcuses, #JayCarney, #Carney, and #CarneyShort were all trending due to the implosion of derangement (aka, reality coming too near the fictional Republican version).
If you’re thinking this is ridiculous, you would be correct. Not only is it irrelevant when the President labeled something an “act of terror”, but there are reasons the administration did not jump the gun and declare another preemptive invasion of an unrelated country, as Republicans are wont to do.
Right wing hero General Petraeus tried to explain this to the Right back in November, “classified intelligence reports revealed that the deadly assault on the American diplomatic mission in Libya was a terrorist attack, but that the administration refrained from saying it suspected that the perpetrators of the attack were Al Qaeda affiliates and sympathizers to avoid tipping off the groups.”
But the right only believe what they’re told on The Drudge and Fox News. Now they’re mad because Obama didn’t help the terrorists by giving them a heads up.
As of Jay Carney’s presser, Benghazi dergangement sydrome is officially an epidmeic.
Sarah has been credentialed to cover President Barack Obama, then VP Joe Biden, 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, and exclusively interviewed Speaker Nancy Pelosi multiple times and exclusively covered her first home appearance after the first impeachment of then President Donald Trump.
Sarah is two-time Telly award winning video producer and a member of the Society of Professional Journalists.
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