President Obama issued a statement "strongly" condemning the "horrific" shootings at the French satirical magazine Charlie Hedbo Wednesday, but back in 2012 the White House questioned the judgment of the very same magazine after they published a cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad.
"We are aware that a French magazine published cartoons featuring a figure resembling the Prophet Muhammad," then-White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said during the September 19, 2012 press briefing, "and obviously, we have questions about the judgment of publishing something like this."
"In other words, we don’t question the right of something like this to be published; we just question the judgment behind the decision to publish it," Carney continued.
Carney then went onto link the Hedbo cartoon to the same video the White House claims caused the attacks on the U.S. asset in Benghazi: "And I think that that’s our view about the video that was produced in this country and has caused so much offense in the Muslim world."
The White House then went on to throw the creator of that video in jail. More recently Obama also chose not to offer Sony any help or assurances that their movie, "The Interview," could be shown in the United States safely.
To recap, despite throwing a movie maker in jail, and not assuring Sony that they could show their movie safely, and questioning the judgement of Charlie Hedbo to publish their cartoons, Obama still claims that "engaging in self-censorship because" is "not what America is about."