◼ The White House is doing something with its local TV interviews that it could not easily get away with in encounters with the White House press corps, which President Obama has been studiously ignoring: choosing the topic about which President Obama and the reporter will talk. - Keith Koffler/White House Dossier
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. Finally, she got to it:
“Let’s talk a little bit about sequestration, because I know that’s why you invited us here,” she said.
Obama used an interview with WVEC Norfolk to specifically bash Republicans.
“The only thing that’s standing in the way of us getting this done right now is the unwillingess on the part of some members of Congress, and folks in in the Republican Party, to give up on some tax breaks for people like me who don’t need them,” he said.
