Even Obama supporters in the media, see a serious problem with the newest revelations coming out of the White House.

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(a nothing burger article as to popularty)

The worst excuse ever: The Rhodes memo debacle

The White House damage control on the latest batch of Benghazi emails is not going well. The White House’s belated release of the documents at the very least show it has been actively evading legitimate congressional requests for relevant information. House Speaker  John Boehner (R-Ohio) issued a blistering statement:

Four Americans lost their lives in Benghazi, and this White House has gone to extraordinary lengths to mislead, obstruct, and obscure what actually took place. I am appalled to learn that the administration concealed relevant documents after the House subpoenaed all emails related to the misleading talking points. When four Americans die at the hands of terrorists, the families of the victims – and the American people – deserve the full, unvarnished truth and nothing less. Instead, this White House been callously dismissive of our efforts to get answers… The House has a constitutional obligation to carry out oversight of the administration, and the president has an obligation to cooperate. This evasiveness must end. Our investigation into the events of that September night is going to continue until this White House owns up to the truth – and until these terrorists are brought to justice.

As for the content of the Rhodes email, in a raucous back and forth with ABC News’s Jonathan Karl Jay Carney insisted that the instructions from Ben Rhodes issued on Sept. 14 to prepare then ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice to go on multiple Sunday shows to stress the anti-Muslim video and to deny this represented a presidential lapse didn’t refer to Benghazi.

That was too much for a number of news people. Fox News’s Bret Baier remarked:

This was a surreal answer from Jay Carney. Now, this is a prep session with Susan Rice, getting ready for five Sunday talk shows. This is three days after 9/11 when four Americans, including the American ambassador to Libya, are killed. Everybody in the chain has said it’s a terrorist attack, everyone in the chain is saying there’s no protest. And yet this email, if we’re to believe Jay Carney at the White House, had nothing to do with Benghazi. It was more about the broad scope of the region. Now, imagine that. What are they going to ask about on five Sunday talk shows when you have four Americans who were killed just days before? They’re not going to ask about the other protests that didn’t see any Americans killed. They’re going to ask about that. So then he said that the reason they didn’t originally put forward this email to the committee — they eventually got it to the committee redacted — was because it didn’t deal with Benghazi. Now, that really strains credulity, I mean it is really out there.

Jake Tapper was similarly dubious, observing  “The context of Rhodes’ emails is, of course, that President Barack Obama was in the midst of a heated re-election campaign where one of his talking points was that he had brought a steady hand in fighting terrorists, indeed that ‘al Qaeda is on the run.’”  . . . . .     

In addition to Graham, Republican Senators John McCain (Ariz.) and Kelly Ayotte (N.H.) as well as House majority leader Eric Cantor (Va.) all argued that the Rhodes memo confirmed the effort to push the video narrative for Libya came out of the White House. 

It is hard to believe that this was not a Benghazi-specific document. The White House was being bombarded by questions about the ambassador’s death. There was a ceremony broadcast live on Sept. 14 to meet the incoming caskets of the murdered Americans. And we are to believe the Rhodes memo was about other demonstrations only? Strangely he does not say “This applies to Egypt but not Libya.” To the contrary, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) pointed out that the email itself references the desire to get people who harmed Americans; the only Americans harmed — killed — were in Benghazi. . . . . . . 

. . . . .   read the full article at the Left Leaning Wa/Post, here.  

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Related:                                                                                                                                                                   Wall Street Journal: New evidence that Ben Rhodes told Susan Rice and Hillary Clinton to blame the video.

Michael D. Shear / New York Times: Email Suggests White House Strategy on Benghazi  —  WASHINGTON — A newly released email shows that White House officials sought to shape the way Susan E. Rice, then the ambassador to the United Nations, discussed the Middle East chaos that was the context for the attack on the American diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, in 2012.