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“This is big,” wrote White House director of new media Macon Phillips in a February 23, 2009 blog post, ”the President today promised that by the end of his first term, he will cut in half the massive federal deficit we’ve inherited. And we’ll do it in a new way: honestly and candidly.” Indeed, President Obama did make that promise that day, saying, “today I’m pledging to cut the deficit we inherited in half by the end of my first term in office. This will not be easy. It will require us to make difficult decisions and face challenges we’ve...

TAPPER: The president, when he spoke to students earlier today acknowledged that the numbers and the budget were so big, they were difficult to talk about. And to break them down, it would be along the lines of a family that makes $29,000 a year spending $38,000 a year, so taking on new debt — $9,000 in new debt, with a $153,000 credit card bill that they were not able to pay down. That would be a way for — like the average American to afford – to understand it. Does that seem responsible? CARNEY: I appreciate the analogy... TAPPER:...

In pointing out how Barack Obama only won in 2008 by a slim margin, so this year’s Republican nominee doesn’t have to win over all that many Americans, ABC’s Jake Tapper on Sunday morning listed the media amongst the factors “going” for Obama four years ago: “You had the media, perhaps, tilting on the scales a little bit.” That’s an understatement, but a noteworthy realization when it comes from the chief White House correspondent for a major network. From the roundtable on the Sunday, January 8 This Week with George Stephanopoulos produced in Manchester, New Hampshire:

ABC News' Jake Tapper confronts White House press secretary Jay Carney over President Obama's schedule which has included a lot of traveling. Citing a Wall Street Journal article about the number of times President Obama has traveled to swing-states, Tapper bluntly asks Carney if Obama is "campaigning on taxpayer dime." "President Obama seems to travel to battleground states more so than any other president before him. Am I'm wondering if you could respond to this. It looks like the president is campaigning on the taxpayer dime more than any other president has done," Tapper said at today's White House briefing.

Two days ago President Obama authorized the deployment to Uganda of approximately 100 combat-equipped U.S. forces to help regional forces “remove from the battlefield” – meaning capture or kill – Lord’s Resistance Army leader Joseph Kony and senior leaders of the LRA. The forces will ultimately go to Uganda, South Sudan, the Central African Republic, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, with the permission of those countries. The president made this announcement in a letter to House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, Friday afternoon, saying that “deploying these U.S. Armed Forces furthers U.S. national security interests and foreign policy and...

A new study by the Kaiser Family Foundation underlines that many of the promises surrounding President Obama’s health care legislation remain unfulfilled, though the White House argues that change is coming. Workers at the Flora Venture flower shop in Newmarket, NH, remember when presidential candidate named Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., promised that their health care costs would go down if they elected him and his health care plan was enacted. On May 3, 2008, the president told voters that he had “a health care plan that would save the average family $2,500 on their premiums.”Last year workers at the flower...

In the hours since the Jimmy Hoffa Voter Encouragement Crisis/Incendiary Rhetorapocalypse, conservative media figures have looked to the White House to provide some becalming wisdom to a shaken nation. At Tuesday’s White House briefing, ABC’s Jake Tapper asked Press Secretary Jay Carney how Hoffa’s comments fit with the President’s post-Tucson remarks in January. (Snip) Tapper began by reading President Obama’s January quote, then asked, “Did he mean that?”

White House officials offered no details about the Rose Garden barbecue and birthday party thrown for President Obama last night. No menu, no guest list, the event did not appear on his official schedule. Ann Compton reports that the Obama family paid for the celebration out of its own pocket. Their silence might be so as to not create the impression that the president was celebrating just hours after the Dow Jones fell 500 points. Politicians hate to be portrayed as fiddling while Rome burns, Nero-style.

With stocks plunging on Wall Street, tensions were rising in today’s White House press briefing as ABC’s Jake Tapper relentlessly demanded Press Secretary Jay Carney explain exactly what it is that President Obama is doing to help create new jobs. When Carney suggested Obama is urging Congress to pass legislation, Tapper got agitated and responded, “so the same stuff he was doing a couple months ago, calling on Congress to pass things?”Critics of Obama will no doubt applaud Tapper’s efforts here, yet even supporters of the President can’t fault Tapper for forcefully demanding answers.

ABC White House correspondent Jake Tapper appeared on the June 27 edition of Dennis Miller's radio show and conceded to a media blackout of Barack Obama's Medal of Honor gaffe. (The President confused a living recipient with the deceased Jared Monti who died in combat.) Tapper admitted that the President made "a big uncomfortable mistake." He added, "And I don't think that that got the same kind of coverage as, you know, when Sarah Palin got Paul Revere's ride-" Tapper's right. His own network, ABC, as well as CBS and NBC have skipped the Monti story. Tapper was away when...

ABC News has learned that Richard Holbrooke, the US Special Representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan, has died. On Friday, Holbrooke was rushed to the hospital with a torn aorta. He went through more than 20 hours of surgery. Earlier this evening, speaking at the US State Department, President Obama sang Holbrooke's praises and called him "a tough son of a gun." Holbrooke, 69, was a former ambassador to the United Nations and served as chief negotiator at the Dayton Peace Accords, which ended the war in Bosnia. The New Yorker's George Packer wrote a nice story about Holbrooke last year,...

Lay, O Lord, a curse on press men, rude and churlish, sad, obsessed men Who persist to query me on matters that they know I must ignore. As I parry, neatly jinking, Tapper stares at me, unblinking; No doubt he is thinking, thinking Robert Gibbs is short one oar. “Jake the Malcontent,” I mumble, “never one to seek rapport.” Of them all, him I abhor.

Gingrich married his second wife, Marianne Ginther, months after he divorced Battley in 1981. According to Battley, Gingrich discussed divorce terms with her while she was in the hospital recovering from cancer surgery. "There are things in my own life that I have gotten on my knees and turned to God and prayed about," Gingrich said. Gingrich also acknowledged cheating on Ginther while leading the impeachment proceedings against President Clinton for allegations of perjury involving the Paula Jones sexual harassment civil case and the president's affair with Monica Lewinsky. Gingrich argued that the Clinton case was different from his personal...

Deficit Commission Co-Chair Apologizes for Calling Social Security 'A Milk Cow with 310 Million T*ts'; Feminist Groups Call for His Ousteractual titleFormer Sen. Alan Simpson, R-Wyo., the GOP co-chair of the president’s deficit commission, apologized today for sending an email to a female activist for seniors in which he described Social Security as “a milk cow with 310 million t*ts.” “Over the last 40 years, I have had my size 15 feet in my mouth a time or two,” Simpson wrote in a letter to the activist, Ashley Carson, on the official stationery of the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility...

President Obama, First Lady Michelle Obama, and their two daughters Sasha and Malia traveled to Nancy's Restaurant on the waterfront of the Oak Bluffs section of Martha’s Vineyard Wednesday afternoon. Crowds gathered to watch as the president, wearing his White Sox baseball cap, noted the abundance of Red Sox caps. He and the First Lady shook hands and posed for pictures with folks in the crowd. The president ordered from the take-out window of the snack bar section of the eatery. "I love your watch," one woman told the First Lady, referencing a purple watch on her left wrist. "Oh,...

Good Morning America's Jake Tapper on Thursday forced a completely unrelated rant by Patrick Kennedy into a story entirely on health care. Tapper pivoted off a statement by Senator Mitch McConnell that legislation on the subject is a "farce." He then spun, "For one Democrat, the force driving that farce- the media- who earned the scorn of Democratic Congressman Patrick Kennedy for focusing away from substance." Tapper then played a clip of the Rhode Island Representative screaming, "If anyone wants to know where cynicism is, cynicism is that there's one, two, press people in this gallery! We're talking about Eric...

White House officials today publicly made it clear that should Thursday’s bipartisan health care reform summit not result in a legislative kumbaya, with Democrats and Republicans setting aside differences to come together on a bipartisan bill, Democrats are likely to pursue a legislative path for finishing up the bill that includes using controversial “reconciliation” rules in the Senate, requiring a majority vote instead of the 60-vote threshold that has become par for the course. “The president wants and believes the American people deserve an up-or-down vote on health reform,” White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer said Monday morning on a...

Behind closed doors and with no cameras present, President Obama signed into law Friday afternoon the bill raising the public debt limit from $12.394 trillion to $14.294 trillion. The current national debt is $12.3 trillion. Check out the National Debt Clock, which tells you your share of that -- roughly $40,000 per citizen, $113,000 per taxpayer.

Jake Tapper asks the WH mouthpiece if it's time for this President to "man up" and make the tough decisions rather than making no decisions at all so he can win at the ballot box: [VIDEO AT SITE] And Sarah Palin asks the President to man up and get rid of an adviser who called some liberal Democrats "retarded" I would ask the president to show decency in this process by eliminating one member of that inner circle, Mr. Rahm Emanuel, and not allow Rahm’s continued indecent tactics to cloud efforts. Yes, Rahm is known for his caustic, crude references...

Title truncated because it's too long. Real title below. Jake Tapper Challenges Robert Gibbs "Isn't the Whole Point of being President to 'Man Up' and Make Tough Decisions?" - Video 2/1/10Here is video of ABC News' Jake Tapper today challenging White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs on his constant whining and blaming of Republicans for not supporting the Obama Agenda. After listening to this again from Gibbs, Tapper said: "But isn't the whole point of being President and controlling the House and Senate to 'man up' and make these tough decisions whether or not it costs you at the ballot...

Here is video of ABC News' Jake Tapper today challenging White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs on his constant whining and blaming of Republicans for not supporting the Obama Agenda. After listening to this again from Gibbs, Tapper said: "But isn't the whole point of being President and controlling the House and Senate to 'man up' and make these tough decisions whether or not it costs you at the ballot box in November?" Everyone knows that the Democrats could have passed their entire agenda without a single Republican vote for a full year. It is the radical nature of the...

A noted Supreme Court historian who “enthusiastically” voted for President Obama in November 2008 today called President Obama’s criticism of the Supreme Court in his State of the Union address last night “really unusual” and said he wouldn’t be surprised if no Supreme Court Justices attend the speech next year. “It was really unusual in my mind to see the president going after the Supreme Court in such a forum,” said author and Law Professor Lucas Powe, the Anne Green Regents Chair in Law, and a Professor of Government at the University of Texas-Austin School of Law. “I’m willing to...

In Diane Sawyer's interview with President Obama today, she asked him if going forward all the conversations should be on C-SPAN. "I think your question points out to a legitimate mistake that I made during the course of the year," the president said, "and that is that we had to make so many decisions quickly in a very difficult set of circumstances that after awhile, we started worrying more about getting the policy right than getting the process right. "But I had campaigned on process," the president continued. "Part of what I had campaigned on was changing how Washington works,...

This at 5 pm:being briefed by senior administration officials on something i cant tell you til 9 pm EST. (sad face) And this about a half hour ago:at 9 pm EST you can go to http://abcnews.blogs.com and see if the suspense was worth it

Jake Tapper and Jonathan Karl report: Congressional Democrats and White House officials negotiating health care reform are paying close attention to the Massachusetts Senate race, where Republican candidate Scott Brown has said he will be the 41st vote to block the final vote on the final bill. Normal Senate rules require 60 votes to proceed to a vote on final passage; with the seat-warming Sen. Paul Kirk, D-Mass., replaced by Brown, Democrats would no longer have those 60 votes. Massachusetts attorney general Martha Coakley, the Democratic candidate flailing in her match with Brown to fill the seat of the late...

Jake Tapper from ABC News asks why Barack Obama "is speaking today about Haiti, for the third time in as many days": White House officials say . . . Haiti is in dire straits. This is a nation that had little to begin with. As opposed to what might be the case had the earthquake struck elsewhere in the hemisphere, Haiti has nearly no ability to deal with this severe crisis on its own.

Late last night, the White House announced that there would be no pool coverage for Sunday, January 10. While the President had no scheduled events this weekend, there was pool coverage yesterday. It could be a mere coincidence, or it could be that the White House is trying to catch its breath before responding to bombshell revelations in the upcoming book Game Change,excerpts of which poured out all day yesterday. President Obama already issued a statement about Harry Reid’s “negro dialect” quote, but even more explosive passages have emerged since. The newest passages from the book to hit Marc Ambinder’s...

On This Week this morning, I noted to White House press secretary Robert Gibbs that there was some deal-making that went on as the health care reform legislation hit the House and especially the Senate -- the kind of deal-making that was one of the reasons that President Obama, then Senator Obama, pledged on the campaign trail that "we'll have the negotiations televised on C-SPAN, so the people can see who is making arguments on behalf of their constituents and who is making arguments on behalf of the drug companies or the insurance companies." PolitiFact labeled that a broken promise...

One of the most significant Christmas presents President Obama ever received was a basketball from the father who was largely absent from his life, the president told Oprah Winfrey. This and other Xmas revelations are part of "Christmas at the White House: An Oprah Primetime Special," set to air Sunday night on ABC at 10 p.m. ET. Asked his favorite Christmas gift as a child, the president recalled a 10 speed bike and then said, "I do remember the one time I met my father he was visiting during Christmas and he gave me a basketball and - the degree...

Another Goldman employee marries into the power-borg The former First Daughter and her investment banker boyfriend Marc Mezvinsky became engaged before Thanksgiving, ABC News' Jake Tapper reports. Via Tapper's "Political Punch" blog: The two sent out an email the morning of Friday November 27 saying: "We're sorry for the mass email but we wanted to wish everyone a belated Happy Thanksgiving! We also wanted to share that we are engaged! We didn't get married this past summer despite the stories to the contrary, but we are looking toward next summer and hope you all will be there to celebrate with...

This really takes the cake: “What I think is appropriate is that in the same way that everybody has to get auto insurance and if you don't, you're subject to some penalty, that in this situation, if you have the ability to buy insurance, it's affordable and you choose not to do so, forcing you and me and everybody else to subsidize you, you know, there's a thousand dollar hidden tax that families all across America are -- are burdened by because of the fact that people don't have health insurance, you know, there's nothing wrong with a penalty.” -...

Alternate headline: “Rabidly pro-choice president sides with pro-choicers.” TAPPER: Here’s a question a lot of Senate Democrats want to know. You said, when you gave your joint address to Congress, that under our plan, no federal dollars will be used to fund abortions. This amendment passed Saturday night which not only prohibits abortion coverage in the public option, but also prohibits women who receive subsidies from taking out plans that — that provide abortion coverage. Does that meet the promise that you set out or does it over reach, does it go too far? OBAMA: You know, I laid out...

Obama said the main message he took from last week’s election results – with Republicans winning gubernatorial races in New Jersey and Virginia – was that Americans are “nervous, and they’re worried and they’re anxious.” “I don't think there's any denying the fact that people are worried out there,” he said in an interview with ABC’s Jake Tapper today. Obama said Democrat Bill Owens victory in the special election in New York’s 23rd congressional district, the one bright spot for the president’s party last Tuesday, “sent an important signal.”

NBC's "The Biggest Loser" is at the White House tonight. This is not a joke.

ABC News fields at least one real reporter. He’s White House correspondent Jake Tapper. Most AT readers, like many Americans, are thoroughly convinced that the legacy media reports with a bias toward Obama and the policies of his administration. So, when a notable exception surfaces, it’s only right that he or she be acknowledged. Jake Tapper has a front row seat at the White House (WH) briefings. He shows all the signs of being a for-real reporter. Here’s visual evidence of that. Remember the cell phone irruption episode back on May 19th during one of Robert Gibbs’ press conferences before...

With Democrats poised to lose the governor's race in Virginia, and to possibly lose the governor's race in New Jersey and a special election for a House seat in New York, the White House has started insisting any pending losses will not have any significance. "Whatever the results are I don't think they portend a lot in dealing with the future," White House press secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters on Friday, pointing to the fact that Democrats won the Virginia and New Jersey governors' races in 2001 despite a very popular President Bush, with Republicans picking up seats in Congress...

Here is a video report on ABC's Jake Tapper confronting White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs on the White House's decision to attack Fox News as not being a real news organization. Tapper asked Gibbs why they were doing that and what gave them the right to do so. Gibbs eventually said, "That's our opinion." Gibbs made the comment in an "off-camera" White House briefing yesterday. "It’s escaped none of our notice that the White House has decided in the last few weeks to declare one of our sister organizations “not a news organization” and to tell the rest of...

On Tuesday, another prominent media member challenged the White House strategy of attacking the Fox News Channel. This time up at the plate was ABC's Jake Tapper who asked White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs during today's gaggle: It’s escaped none of our notice that the White House has decided in the last few weeks to declare one of our sister organizations “not a news organization” and to tell the rest of us not to treat them like a news organization. Can you explain why it’s appropriate for the White House to decide that a news organization is not one?

It's tough to imagine this year's Republican National Convention featuring a prime-time speaker who once said that that "Zionism is a kind of poisonous weed that is choking Judaism." Or that he was "sick and tired of hearing about the Holocaust." Or that traditional Democratic support for Israel is because of "the Jewish element in the party ... a kind of glorified form of bribery." And certainly not if he had ever referred to Jews as "Hymies" and New York as "Hymietown." The Rev. Jesse Jackson, of course, has made all of these comments, and more.

President Obama at the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation dinner last night, discussing false claims made about the health care reform bill, told a little anecdote. "I was up at the G20 -- just a little aside -- I was up at the G20, and some of you saw those big flags and all the world leaders come in and Michelle and I are shaking hands with them," the president said. "One of the leaders -- I won't mention who it was -- he comes up to me. We take the picture, we go behind. "He says, 'Barack, explain to me...

As we all know, in the criminal justice system, the people are represented by two separate yet equally important groups: the police who investigate crime and the district attorneys who prosecute the offenders. Last night's episode of television's longest running drama -- NBC's "Law & Order" -- featured District Attorney Jack McCoy prosecuting a John Yoo-esque Bush administration Justice Department attorney for writing a legal memo authorizing the torture of detainees. "Jack, you want to prosecute a member of the Bush administration for assaulting suspected terrorists?" McCoy is asked in the season premiere episode, titled "Memo from the Dark Side."...

A short time ago, President Obama's Justice Department filed a brief in the U.S. District Court in Massachusetts defending the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, which defends the right of states to not recognize same-sex marriages from other states -- a law President Obama opposes. You can read the brief HERE. Unlike the administration's previous filing in June -- which upset gays and lesbians by seeming to compare the illegitimacy of same sex couples to incestuous couples -- this filing states right off the bat that the president opposes DOMA because it is "discriminatory." "The government’s filing continues to make...

ABC News has learned that President Obama will be meeting with 16 Democratic senators (and one "Independent Democrat") this afternoon at the White House. They are: Senators Mark Pryor and Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas, Mark Warner of Virginia, Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, Evan Bayh of Indiana, Claire McCaskill of Missouri, Tom Carper of Delaware, Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, Mark Begich of Alaska, Mark Udall and Michael Bennet of Colorado, Ben Nelson of Nebraska, Bill Nelson of Florida, Kay Hagan of North Carolina, Herb Kohl of Wisconsin, and Independent Democrat Joe Lieberman of Connecticut.

ABC News’ Rachel Martin and Sunlen Miller Report: President Obama said that on Labor Day it’s time to “reaffirm” the nation’s commitment to rebuild, and declared that the stimulus plan is working. Speaking before the friendly crowd during the annual AFL-CIO Labor Day picnic in Cincinnati Ohio this afternoon, the President said that it’s time to ensure that the middle class remains the backbone of the economy, “not just a vanishing ideal we celebrate a picnics once a year as summer turns to fall.” In rhetoric similar to the campaign trail, the President said this has been is an ideal...

[Title was edited to comply with space requirements. Full, accurate title is: "Controversial Obama Administration Official Denies Being Part of 9/11 "Truther" Movement, Apologizes for Past Comments" A top environmental official of the Obama administration issued a statement Thursday apologizing for past incendiary statement and denying that he ever agreed with a 2004 petition on which his name appears, a petition calling for congressional hearings and an investigation by the New York Attorney General into "evidence that suggests high-level government officials may have deliberately allowed the September 11th attacks to occur." Van Jones, the Special Advisor for Green Jobs at...

A top environmental official of the Obama administration issued a statement Thursday apologizing for past incendiary statement and denying that he ever agreed with a 2004 petition on which his name appears, a petition calling for congressional hearings and an investigation by the New York Attorney General into "evidence that suggests high-level government officials may have deliberately allowed the September 11th attacks to occur." Van Jones, the Special Advisor for Green Jobs at the White House Council on Environmental Quality, is Number 46 of the petitioners from the so-called "Truther" movement which suggests that people in the administration of President...

ABC News’ Jake Tapper and Karen Travers report: In a conference call with liberal and progressive religious leaders Wednesday afternoon, President Obama railed against those who were “bearing false witness” in the debate over health care reform. “I know there's been a lot of misinformation in this debate, and there are some folks out there who are, frankly, bearing false witness, but I want everyone to know what health insurance reform is all about,” the president said. “Thou shalt not bear false witness against your neighbor,” is, of course, one of the Ten Commandments. (It’s the 9th Commandment in all...

Amidst questions of whether or not any Senate Republicans will support a health care reform bill, Jim Manley, spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., today said that the “White House and the Senate Democratic leadership still prefer a bipartisan bill.” The Reid spokesman said that “neither the White House nor the leadership have made a decision to pursue reconciliation,” the somewhat controversial legislative process by which a bill is introduced in such a manner so that it requires merely 50 votes instead of 60 to proceed to a vote, thus removing the threat of filibuster. Manley said that...

Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, the health-policy adviser at the White House’s Office of Management and Budget -- who has been caricatured by conservatives as a “Dr. Death” seeking to pull the I.V.s out of your grandparents’ arms in the name of cost containment -- is not happy. Asked by ABC News in an interview about the thoroughly discredited claim by former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin to paint his philosophical writings as evidence -- along with a provision providing optional end of life counseling in the House Democrats’ health care reform bill -- that President Obama wants to set up “death panels”...

The White House disagreed this afternoon with the contention by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Maryland, that the disruptions at town hall meetings are "un-American," as the Democratic congressional leaders contended in a USA Today op-ed this morning. "I think there's actually a pretty long tradition of people shouting at politicians in America," White House deputy press secretary Bill Burton told reporters on Air Force One when asked about the comments. "The President thinks that if people want to come and have a spirited debate about health care, a real vigorous conversation about it,...