Now that the normally loyal White House press corps has stopped continually carrying water for President Obama (they only do it 90 percent of the time now), the Administration is resorting to a new tactic of going to local media for interviews while at the same time setting specific questions for them to ask about.
Instead of being asked to account for ridiculous statements from his campaign staff and the outrageous claims of Harry Reid, President Obama is using hand-picked local journalists and requiring them to ask about the budget deal he signed with Republicans a year ago which requires automatic budget cuts called sequestration in the event no official budget is signed. Many of these cuts will be to the military, something that the Obama White House is keen on letting swing state voters know about.
White House reporter Keith Koffler has the details:
But the three other interviews Obama also held Monday pointed to the advantage he gets by focusing on local press, with whom he has been speaking more regularly. [...]
Two of the reporters were from Norfolk, Virginia and Jacksonville, Florida, both presidential battleground states. The third was from San Diego.
The reporters mostly made no effort to hide the arrangement. “The president invited me to talk about sequestration,” NBC 7 San Diego’s reporter told her audience. In the interview, she set Obama up with a perfectly pitched softball the president couldn’t have been more eager to take a swing at:
“What do you want individual San Diegans to know about sequestration?” she asked.
Donna Deegan of FCN Jacksonville initially seemed to apologize for not broaching the appointed subject right away.
“Mr. President, I know we were asked to talk about sequestration today,” she said, but then added she wanted to talk about something else first.
One wonders how nefarious liberal journalists would find this arrangement were a Republican president to utilize it.
