Posted on 08/01/2012 7:42:23 AM PDT by Sub-Driver
White House senior aide apologizes to conservative columnist for Churchill claim By Alicia M. Cohn - 08/01/12 09:20 AM ET
White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer apologized to conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer this week after Pfeiffer called him out on the White House website over renewed criticism over the Obama administration's relationship with Great Britain.
"A better understanding of the facts on my part and a couple of deep breaths at the outset would have prevented this situation," Pfeiffer wrote in his apology.
Krauthammer, in a Sunday column for The Washington Post, had asked for an apology from the administration after being singled out in an earlier blog post by Pfeiffer. Krauthammer's column listed the history of White House art that had been blurred by a previous post from Pfeiffer.
“I take your criticism seriously and you are correct that you are owed an apology,” Pfeiffer responded in a personal letter to Krauthammer that was also posted on the official White House blog on Tuesday evening. “There was clearly an internal confusion about the two busts and there was no intention to deceive. I clearly overshot the runway in my post.”
Last Friday, Pfeiffer addressed what he called a "ridiculous" and "100 percent false" claim — specifically mentioning Krauthammer as reviving it — that a bust of former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill had been returned to the British Embassy at the start of President Obama's first term. Republican presumptive presidential candidate Mitt Romney, earlier in the week while in London, had promised to return the bust to the Oval Office if he became president, an apparent jab at the relationship between the Obama administration and Great Britain.
"The bust still in the White House. In the Residence. Outside the Treaty Room," Pfeiffer wrote in the original post, including a 2010 photo of President Obama and Prime Minister David Cameron looking at the bust to prove it's in the White House.
"The Churchill sculpture shown in the photograph is a different copy — given to President Lyndon Johnson, kept in the White House collection for half a century and displayed in the White House residence," Krauthammer wrote in his column on Sunday.
The original blog post had been amended on Friday to reflect that fact. During former President George W. Bush's term, there were actually two Churchill busts in the White House, the one given to Johnson and one lent to Bush by then-Prime Minister Tony Blair that he had on display in the Oval Office. It was the latter bust that Krauthammer, and likely Romney, had referenced.
Pfeiffer did not explain in the amended blog post if the loaned bust had been returned to Great Britain when Bush left office, but he explained that all "art" from the previous administration was removed from the Oval Office on Obama's Inauguration Day in 2009, "as is common practice at the end of every presidency."
The British Embassy later clarified that the bust that had been loaned to Bush for display in the Oval Office had, in fact, been returned to the British Embassy and "now resides in the British ambassador’s residence in Washington D.C.”
Obama replaced the Churchill bust that his predecessor had in the Oval Office with one of former President Abraham Lincoln, while the original Churchill bust remained in the residence and appears in the photo Pfeiffer shared on the blog.
Pfeiffer wrote in his apology, "The point I was trying to make — under the belief that the Bust in the residence was the one previously in the Oval Office — was that this oft-repeated talking point about the bust being a symbol of President Obama’s failure to appreciate the special relationship is false."
typical lib non-apology apology if you ask me...
The entire pseudo-reality of the Obama agenda and presence in the White House is based on hatred and lies. If one researches the background as to WHY Obama took out the original bust of Churchill, the real truth becomes clear. It all reflects upon Obama’s lineage of communism and Churchill’s hate for it.
The light of truth and the entire Obama sham cannot occupy the same space.
Of course...ABCBSNBCNNPR will ignore this story.
Take your non apology and jam it up your well worn evacuation port.
LLS
“Republican presumptive presidential candidate Mitt Romney... had promised to return the bust to the Oval Office if he became president, an apparent jab at the relationship between the Obama administration and Great Britain.”
I think the main issue here is that this demonstrates “O’s” perfect absense of appreciation for the historical significance and stature of the MAN Churchill. It also expresses “O’s” habitual and childish refusal to recognize or defer to excellence in others ... even individuals universally acknowledged as giants of statesmanship and diplomacy....as Churchill most certainly IS!
“O” has NO understanding of history, no CLASS and is so hopelessly out of his element that his own sense of inferiority weighs upon him and is apparent in everything he does and says! How pathetic.
An apology for an out and out LIE means nothing.
“When I wake up in the morning I will be sober. When you wake up you will still be Zero.”
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