Get the popcorn.
Bret Baier has a rip-roaring post where he questions why CBS held footage of President Obama dodging the Benghazi-terrorism question in a 60 Minutes interview and thereby, contradicting Obama’s own narrative of what he thought of the Benghazi attack in its immediate aftermath.
Here’s an excerpt, starting where Baier is discussing CBS releasing the video footage as the network attempted to push back against Romney’s contention from the 2nd debate that the president had failed to accurately call Benghazi “terrorism”:
[. . .] Soon after that debate exchange, CBS released a previously unseen clip of an interview “60 Minutes’” Steve Kroft did with Obama on Sept. 12 — the day after the Benghazi attack.
The clip added to the previous sound that had been released and seemed to back up the president’s claim that he was referring to the Benghazi attack as a terrorist act in the Rose Garden on Sept. 12. Here’s what CBS put out Oct. 19, five weeks after the attack.
KROFT: But there are reports that they were very heavily armed with grenades, that doesn’t sound like your normal demonstration.
OBAMA: As I said, we’re still investigating exactly what happened, I don’t want to jump the gun on this. But your right that this is not a situation that was exactly the same as what happened in Egypt. And my suspicion is there are folks involved in this. Who were looking to target Americans from the start. So we’re gonna make sure that our first priority is to get our folks out safe, make sure our embassies are secured around the world and then we are going to go after those folks who carried this out.”
After the second debate back and forth, this seemed to back up the president’s stance. The only problem? Kroft started his question with “but.”
I always thought, it seems that he’s following up on a question — I wonder if there was a question before that question?
And Baier was correct. There was a previous question, that basically makes Romney’s point from the debate that Obama was dodging on calling it terrorism. Baier continues with the timeline of what Obama said and when he said it:
About 12 hours later — before heading to Las Vegas for a campaign event — Obama sits down for that “60 Minutes” interview with Steve Kroft.
And Sunday night, 54 days after the attack and almost two weeks after putting out the first additional clip that appeared to back up the president after the second debate, CBS without fanfare posted the rest of the Benghazi question online — the question before the question.
Remember this is from a president who has been saying he was calling Benghazi a terrorist attack from the very first moment in the Rose Garden. Also, remember what he said in the debate and notice the new part — underlined in bold.
KROFT: Mr. President, this morning you went out of your way to avoid the use of the word terrorism in connection with the Libya Attack, do you believe that this was a terrorism attack?
OBAMA: Well it’s too early to tell exactly how this came about, what group was involved, but obviously it was an attack on Americans. And we are going to be working with the Libyan government to make sure that we bring these folks to justice, one way or the other.
KROFT: It’s been described as a mob action, but there are reports that they were very heavily armed with grenades, that doesn’t sound like your normal demonstration.
OBAMA: As I said, we’re still investigating exactly what happened, I don’t want to jump the gun on this. But your right that this is not a situation that was exactly the same as what happened in Egypt. And my suspicion is there are folks involved in this. Who were looking to target Americans from the start. So we’re gonna make sure that our first priority is to get our folks out safe, make sure our embassies are secured around the world and then we are going to go after those folks who carried this out.
So, the president and his surrogates refer to this Rose Garden speech as some sort of proof the president called what happened a terror attack, but literally, minutes later, Obama refuses to do so with CBS.
Here’s the issue: we label everything bad as “terror.” Obama is hiding behind the semantics of “terror” while avoiding the crucial question of whether Benghazi was a spontaneous “terror” attack caused by a YouTube video or was it a pre-planned terrorist attack.
With a spontaneous attack, the administration had cover. With a pre-planned attack, Obama had no cover and would be forced to answer many questions, all that would make him look bad.
It’s old news that Team Obama pushed the YouTube story as the cause for days and days after the attack and this CBS clip — previously withheld — shows that Mitt Romney’s criticism of the president was not only accurate, but Team Obama was misleading the public when they tried to spin the Rose Garden speech to counter Romney.
More disgusting is that CBS let this clip lie buried until now.