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When Obama Claimed He Was "Outraged" By IRS Targeting Scandal, He Was, Get This, Lying
Friday night, Mary Katharine Ham traced Obama's "evolution" of mind vis-à-vis the IRS targeting scandal. (Note: A video autoplays when you hit the link, but it's still worth going over there.)
Using Obama's public statements, she tracks Obama going through his typical okey-doke:
First, he claims to be outraged, and filled with steely determination to get down to the facts of the matter.
Second, he began suggesting, without actually stating, that the IRS scandal was a phony scandal and a distraction:
For most of this year, we've seen an endless parade of distractions and political posturing and phony scandals and we keep on shifting our way — shifting our attention away from what we should be focused on, which is how do we strengthen the middle class and grow the economy for everybody?
Finally, during the Matthews interview, he made it explicit that he thought people who were "outraged" by this were rather silly creatures.
No word on whether he finds himself silly, for being "outraged" so many months (um, six months) ago.
OBAMA: That's not — that's not something that's reported about. If, on the other hand, you've got an office in Cincinnati, in the IRS office that — I think, for bureaucratic reasons, is trying to streamline what is a difficult law to interpret about whether a nonprofit is actually a political organization, deserves a tax exempt agency. And they've got a list, and suddenly everybody's outraged.
MATTHEWS: 501(c)(4) is tricky to begin with, how to define it.
OBAMA: To begin with.
The president even appeared annoyed that liberal commentators once dared to challenge him on the point:
OBAMA: And by the way, Chris, I'll point out that there are some so-called progressives and, you know, perceived to be liberal commentators who during that week were just as outraged at the possibility that these folks, you know, had — had been, you know, at the direction of — the Democratic Party, in some way — discriminated against these folks.
Why the shift? As we keep noticing, Obama only cares about the next news cycle. He says what he has to say to get on the news for the next news cycle. He wants to be seen saying the right things for that news cycle. Then, when interest dies down a bit, he attempts a new tack.
But he never gets called on how his Early News Cycle Management Bullshit is wholly contradictory to his Slightly Later News Cycle Management Bullshit. The media never asks him What new information was presented to you to change your opinion on the IRS scandal from "outrageous" to "phony scandal"?
Was it high-ranking partisan IRS official Lois Lerner repeatedly invoking the Fifth Amendment to avoid confessing a criminal act in a Congressional hearing?
Was it learning that a White House lawyer, William Wilkins, coordinated directly with the self-avowedly-at-criminal-risk Lois Lerner, and then testified 80 times that he couldn't remember key details about communications with the Treasury Department about the scandal?
These facts would suggest any evolution should move in the opposite direction -- from outrage to even more outraged.
Instead, when Obama learns that his high-ranking ministers are invoking the Fifth Amendment and clamming up like mobsters, he becomes less outraged, and, apparently, begins to think this is all a "distraction."
The Washington Times' Joe Curl is noticing this odd evolution as well-- and Obama's bizarre claim that the entire scandal was invented by the media in order to punish a President they're hostile towards.
But President Obama, in an interview last week with sycophant Chris Matthews, now says the entire scandal was made up by the media.
"When we do things right, they don't get a lot of attention," the president said, no doubt sending a thrill up the MSNBC host's leg. "If we do something that is perceived at least initially as a screw-up, it will be on the nightly news for a week."
Like, say, deploying the nation's tax watchdog to target political opponents? Just a "screw-up."
You bet. Manufactured in the media.
In the Curious World of Barack Obama, a hostile media makes up lies about him to make him look bad.