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Gibbs: 'We're not running against George W. Bush' By Michael O'Brien - 08/16/11 08:24 AM ET President Obama's reelection campaign isn't running against the specter of former President George W. Bush, said a top voice for the president's 2012 campaign. Robert Gibbs, the former White House press secretary-turned-campaign surrogate, accused the field of Republican presidential candidates of reviving the policies that caused the current economic difficulties. But that doesn't mean the Obama campaign's running against Bush, Gibbs maintained. "We're not running against George W. Bush," he said on MSNBC, explaining that it's just many of the policies of Bush "But...

Apparently, Lawrence O'Donnell isn't the only one who needs a Sarah Palin translator. At Wednesday's White House briefing, I asked Robert Gibbs if he thought Palin's remarks to CBN, in which she suggested President Obama doesn't know “what America stands for,” were a dog-whistle to the Birther movement, questioning the President's American-ness, and if this [...]...posted using frpa

Yesterday, Lester Kinsolving, WND’s correspondent at the White House Press briefing, asked the following question: “What does the President think of the move of 20% of the states to require presidential candidates to prove with documentation their natural born citizenship status in order to be on the president ballot in those states?” Robert Gibbs, Obama’s Press Secretary refused to answer the question and successfully brushed it aside. Gibbs has always been an obsequious untrustworthy toady. His behaviour in this case is not unexpected. What is really disgraceful is the behaviour of the White House Press corp. Our mainstream media reporters...

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs suggested Thursday that President Obama has asked Hosni Mubarak to resign as president of Egypt now, though he didn’t say it outright. Here’s the exchange from the gaggle with reporters aboard Air Force One: Question: “Does the administration want Mubarak to step down now?” Gibbs: “I’d refer you to my answer on that yesterday. I think the – I’m not going to get into the private conversations that the President has had with President Mubarak. “The time for transition, as the president said, is now.

Hosni Mubarak needs to quit now, an increasingly frustrated Washington demanded as President Barack Obama struggled to contain a worsening Egyptian crisis that threatens to spread across the Arab world. “Now means yesterday,” spokesman Robert Gibbs said Wednesday

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs released this statement Wednesday morning on the violent clashes with protesters in Egypt, hours after President Obama called for restraint: "The United States deplores and condemns the violence that is taking place in Egypt, and we are deeply concerned about attacks on the media and peaceful demonstrators. We repeat our strong call for restraint."

President Obama will probably take questions from reporters on Friday, after walling himself off from the press corps’s questions about his handling of the political crisis in Egypt, press secretary Robert Gibbs said. Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper is scheduled to visit the White House on Friday; normally when a head of state visits, Obama will make a statement to reporters. "I think you'll get a chance likely to talk to the president later in the week, when Prime Minister Harper's here," Gibbs told reporters on Wednesday.

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs says President Barack Obama's delivered a "frank" directive to Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak yesterday that he must begin the transition to a new government now. "The message that the president delivered clearly to President Mubarak was that the time for change had come," Gibbs said in the daily White House briefing.

The White House has been struggling to strike a balance between showing support for a key ally, Hosni Mubarak, while also showing support for freedom and democracy, but now the White House seems to be coming down harder in support of the protestors. At the press briefing just now, Robert Gibbs conspicuously declined to answer directly when asked if the President stands by Mubarak, saying only: "We're monitoring a very fluid situation." Gibbs also repeatedly called on security personnel in Egypt to "refrain from violence," and insisted that the "legitimate grievences that have fested for quite some time in Egypt...

The administration tried to strike a cautious balance Friday between backing a longtime U.S. ally and supporting pro-democracy demonstrators as violent protests against the regime in Egypt spiraled out of control. White House press secretary Robert Gibbs called for restraint in Egypt as protesters there continue to square off with government forces. Gibbs said President Obama still has not spoken with endangered Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, who has ruled the country for nearly 30 years, but he said U.S. officials have been communicating to Egyptian officials American displeasure with the situation. "We have throughout the process, our ambassador and others...

The answer seems to be 'no.' "I don't have an up -- an updated list of calls," White House press secretary Robert Gibbs told the press when asked if President Obama has spoken to any world leaders about the deteriorating situation in Egypt.

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs sought to ally himself with the reporters who cover him on Thursday as he confirmed that a condition for Hu Jintao visiting the White House was that the Chinese president would have to answer to American reporters. "I was very clear in the planning of this that we would have a press conference and that the press conference would include questions from you guys," Gibbs tells his press corps. "We were clear that's what they understood [would happen] if they came." Asked if the White House got any resistance on that, Gibbs said no....

What was billed as a memorial for victims of the Arizona shooting rampage turned into a rollicking rally, leaving some conservative commentators wondering whether President Barack Obama's speech was a scripted political event. Not so, insisted the White House and host University of Arizona. Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs said Thursday he and other aides didn't expect the president's remarks at the school's basketball arena to receive as much rousing applause as it did. Gibbs said the crowd's response, at times cheering and shouting, was understandable.

White House Says It Wasn't Responsible for Picking Rowdy Basketball Arena for Arizona Memorial Service Thursday, January 13, 2011 By Fred Lucas Washington (CNSNews.com) – White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said Thursday that the White Houes was not responsible for choosing a basketball arena, as opposed to a church or a smaller auditorium that might be more conducive to a solemn event, for Wednesday's night's memorial service in Tucson, Ariz. The McKale Memorial Center, an athletics facility at the University of Arizona, was packed with a reported 14,000 people, who repeatedly broke out in cheers and screams of a...

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs expressed tepid approval on Thursday for Sen. Mark Udall’s idea that the parties sit together, not separate, during President Obama’s State of the Union address on Jan. 25. “I haven't had an opportunity to talk to some folks around here on that. It's an interesting idea,” Gibbs told reporters on Thursday. “Maybe not having a physical aisle separate us would be a good thing as we talk about the state of our union, and that's everybody. That's not one side or the other. That's everyone.”

New chief of staff says he did not push Robert Gibbs out of White House By Sam Youngman - 01/07/11 12:17 PM ET Bill Daley, President Obama's new chief of staff, said Friday that reports he pushed press secretary Robert Gibbs out of the White House are untrue. A story in the London Telegraph, which was also linked on the Drudge Report, said Daley would not come to work if Gibbs was allowed to stay in the White House as a chief adviser. But Daley said in a statement that Gibbs's name "never, ever came up once in any discussion...

When President Obama thanked Robert Gibbs for his service on Wednesday, he suggested it made sense for his outgoing press secretary to want to go earn big money. "He's had a six-year stretch now where basically he's been going 24/7 with relatively modest pay," Obama told the New York Times. But at a time of persistent unemployment and a sagging economy, Obama's comments begged a question: Is a six-figure government salary really "relatively modest"? Opponents may see his thoughts on pay as red meat for the growing fight regarding public sector compensation. Mayors, governors and lawmakers of both parties are...

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs says he will never leave President Obama's circle, even if he's stepping down from his official post as his spokesman. "I may leave the White House, but I'm not going to leave being a member of Barack Obama’s team," he said on MSNBC's "Daily Rundown" on Thursday. "I will be that forever."

Gibbs: indefinite detention of terrorists regrettable White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said Sunday that it was unfortunate that some terrorist suspects at Guantanamo Bay need to be held indefinitely without trial. "Some would be tried in federal courts, as we've seen done in the past. Some would be tried in military commissions, likely spending the rest of their lives in a maximum security prison that nobody, including terrorists, have ever escaped from. Some, regrettably, will have to be indefinitely detained," Gibbs said on CNN's "State of the Union" as he described Obama's beleaguered plan for closing Guantanamo. The press...

Gibbs: Republicans are accountable now By: CNN's Gabriella Schwarz (CNN) - With significant Republican gains in the U.S. House and Senate and a new session of Congress around the corner, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said the Republican Party now has more responsibility to govern. "There was a responsibility of government that I think the Republicans got in the November elections and they began to understand that responsibility a little bit more in this lame duck session than they had in the previous, quite frankly, 18 months or so," Gibbs said Sunday on CNN's "State of the Union." He...