I think you have the right idea that Obama didn’t want anything to get in the way of his claim that he helped the Arab Spring and that the Arab Spring was all sweetness and light, but I’m still curious as to how an obscure video trailer that had only about 10K views on YouTube was tapped as the scapegoat for the terrorism.
I’m sure you could point to any number of anti-Muslim videos on YT with many more views and notoriety than the one they picked.
I recall that a spokesperson (maybe the PM himself) of Egypt even denied that the video had anything to do with the protests.
What was it about this particular video that it was tapped so quickly?
Probably some 20 something intern in the WH who found it surfing the net and decided "that must be the reason".
Who knows how they came up with that lame excuse, but they are tarred with it now. We just need to add the feathers to the tar.