Obama: I Didn't Realize How Nervous People Were About Terrorism Because I Don't Watch Enough Television

Guy Benson | December 18, 2015 2:35 PM

Kind of a weird statement from a guy who seems to learn quite a lot about world events by first hearing about them in the press, no? Snark aside, this is

an actual self-assessment from the President of the United States in the days after two major terrorist attacks killed dozens in Western cities. Extraordinary and damning:

Obama needs more cable news in his media diet? Revealing comment in a private meeting with newspaper columnists... pic.twitter.com/iUHz6Ey38g
— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) December 18, 2015

This is a dangerously out-of-touch, cloistered "leader" -- the type of man who'd give a news-free speech on national security without mentioning the major, controversial steps he'd just taken to undermine national security. Incidentally, the Times stealth-edited this highly newsy nugget, disappearing it down the memory hole. I wonder why. The paper says it was due to length constraints, but that excuse doesn't fly. They ended up adding more words to the final version than they erased. It's almost as if they're protecting a political ally. Notice how nobody is claiming that O didn't say this, or that it's not newsworthy. It just vanished, for reasons that are transparently bogus. We have a president who has been wrong about ISIS at every turn, and whose administration is facing serious allegations that it ignored and cooked intelligence to fit their political narratives. We have a president who thinks climate change is a more pressing national security matter than Islamist jihadi terrorism, which he takes great pains not to identify by name. And we have a president who evidently needs CNN, MSNBC and Fox News to explain to him just how frightened normal people are by the notion of being shot or blown up by terrorists. Does he