‘Scrub’ Alert: NYT Deletes Obama’s Excuse For Failing To Grasp Terror Anxiety

by Shifra on December 18, 2015

obamapostergraffiti

Not sure which is more outrageous:

Obama’s “explanation” that he failed to grasp the full extent of Americans’ anxiety over the Paris and San Bernardino attacks because he did not watch enough cable TV, or the NYT’s “explanation” that they omitted Obama’s comments due to “space requirements.”

Via Daily Caller:

The New York Times removed significant portions of an article it published on Thursday in which President Obama reportedly made the admission that he failed to recognize Americans’ anxiety level following the terrorist attacks in Paris and San Bernardino….

When unimportant information is involved, outlets rarely acknowledge the changes. And indeed, a spokeswoman for The Times tells The Daily Caller that the article was merely “trimmed” because of space requirements. But the two passages scrubbed from The Times article, written by Peter Baker and Gardiner Harris, appear to have contained significant information about Obama’s public response to the terror massacres. Obama’s reported statements also lend credence to Republican criticism that his response to the terrorist massacres was lacking.

In one of the pre-scrubbed versions of the article, Obama was said to have told a group of about 10 reporters during a two-hour off-the-record meeting held on Tuesday that he did not fully grasp how much anxiety Americans felt following the terrorist attacks in Paris and San Bernardino because he didn’t watch enough cable TV….

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4 Comments | Leave a comment
  1. Maynard says:
    December 18, 2015 at 17:21

    This Federalist post, “The New York Times Just Memory-Holed This Devastating Obama Admission”, provides a quote of the excised material.

    In his meeting with the columnists, Mr. Obama indicated that he did not see enough cable television to fully appreciate the anxiety after the attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, and made clear that he plans to step up his public arguments. Republicans were telling Americans that he is not doing anything when he is doing a lot, he said.

    The foregoing was replaced by:

    Mr. Obama argued that while there were potentially threats that would merit the kind of investment of lives and money equivalent to that made in the Iraq war, the Islamic State does not pose an existential threat to the United States and therefore the response should be measured. The United States needs to take on the group, in part to defend allies in the region, he said, but it should not be an all-out war.

    Moreover, he added, part of the group’s strategy is to draw the United States into a broader military entanglement in thre region. A sustained but limited campaign may be slow and politically unsatisfying, but ultimately will be more successful, he contended.

    So basically the report changed from Obama explaining that he was out of touch with the heartland to Obama explaining that the heartland was out of touch with him.

    • Alain41 says:
      December 18, 2015 at 17:55

      Original statement has immigration control at its heart. Revised paragraph shifts focus to war in the Middle East. Obama wins when ME war is topic and he loses when immigration is the topic. Win the news cycle.

  2. cbldski says:
    December 18, 2015 at 17:39

    I think what Obama meant to say is that he does not go to his daily national security press briefings.

  3. hbmuzik says:
    December 19, 2015 at 15:23

    Well, I didn’t count the characters, but it looks like NYT managed to replace 3.3 lines of text with 4. So much for the “space requirement” bullsh.

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