Posted on 01/20/2015 5:56:10 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough said Tuesday it was his fault the White House didn’t send the president or another senior member of the administration to a unity rally in Paris earlier this month following the terror attack on a satirical newspaper.
“We’ve said we regret we didn’t send someone more senior than out ambassador,” McDonough said in an interview with NBC’s “The Today Show. “That rests on me, that’s my job.”
McDonough said he regretted the decision in particular because “the melee that ensued after that has covered up and obfuscated the very good progress that our intelligence agencies” and law enforcement made cooperating with the French and other allies.
“Unfortunately, the decisions I made obfuscated that effort,” McDonough said.
The comments represented the first time a White House official personally took responsibility for the decision not to dispatch the president or vice president to the rally.
Press secretary Josh Earnest said last week it was a mistake and that it was a missed opportunity to send a symbolic message that “ the American people stand shoulder-to-shoulder with our allies in France.” But he and other White House officials repeatedly declined to say who had made the decision, other than to stress that the decision had not made its way to the president’s desk.
Republicans seized on the absence to criticize the White House.
"The absence is symbolic of the lack of American leadership on the world stage, and it is dangerous," Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said in an op-ed in Time magazine.
But French officials largely shrugged off Obama’s decision not to appear, and praised the U.S. for its assistance in the aftermath of the attack.
“We have been overwhelmed by the expression of solid solidarity and grief and all corners of the American people, from the highest level of the administration since President Obama came to the French Embassy and Secretary Kerry, to the ordinary Americans,” French Ambassador Gérard Araud told MSNBC.
Heh.
I thought Denis was a girl’s name?
Must be nice to go through life with a ‘safety net’ under your a%$ 100% of the time.
That way you never have to be responsible and of course, the other side of that coin is... you never grow up, either!
:)
Two years left of Obama. If he orders 100 new buses, he should have just about enough room for the underlings he will throw under them in order to escape blame for his actions
The rally went better without Obama.Who wants that attention whore around anyway?
Obama always makes somebody fall on their sword for him when he realizes he’s gone too far and become too obvious in his contempt for the US (in things ranging from Benghazi to the Paris no-show).
So....is this the same guy that screwed up when Obama was giving a “gift of his speeches” to the UK Queen but in a DVD format that couldn’t be viewed in UK players? That dude?
Does anybody believe Obama, Valerie, et al are so moronic, so vacuous, so disconnected that they just ‘missed it’ because this poor flunky just “screwed up?”
Was he fired? Will he be? My guess is not. Obama told him “it’s your day in the barrel son” is more like it.
These people are such amateurs, and this MSM just laps it up like pig slop.
It’s OUR reaction to it, not Obama’s absence that he regrets.
Denis is stoopid
Another one under the bus. When is this baby of a president ever going to admit to his MANY failures? If anyone should fake an apology, it should be Valerie Jarrett, who is making the decisions for this pathetic zero of a president.
"...it was his fault the White House didn’t send the president..."
The "White House" IS the president. So this means, the president didn't send the president. Got it.
THE BUCK STOPS...
anywhere but here.
(sign on Obama’s desk)
George W. Bush is one of Obama’s aides?
Um, Holder was already there. Did the AG refuse to march?
Looks like another smokescreen, as were the AG’s meetings, IMO.
The arm-in-arm photo-op was ridiculous. It was symbolism over substance.
Just this morning ISIS issed a new video/photo of 2 Japanese who are going to be beheaded unless they get a $200 million ransome.
==
Obama has never been a ‘foreign policy president’ and hardly even reacts to world stage events. His 2 SoSs have not been much better, as both hold extreme left views. Recall just days before the Paris attacks, Hillary was saying ‘we’ need to try to understand the poor widdle tewwoists.
==
Actions speak louder than words. The arm-in-arm kumbaya moment was a feelgoodism. Progressives/Liberals are expert at feelgoodisms.
ISIS continues beheading and killing hundreds. Boko Haram continues to capture and kill dozens, a few hundred, a few thousand.
Feelgoodisms are not going to defeat those kinds of radical fanatics.
...fixed.
*****
My goodness. Does Obama ever take the blame for any of his blunders? Or, does he simply take all the credit when he does a few right things?
Did McDonough go on the TODAY show on his own, or was he ordered to do so by Obama in order to be Obama's scapegoat?
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