Josh Gerstein

As Inauguration Commences, Obama Ignores Jobs Council, Late Drafting Budget Proposal
By Matt Vespa | January 21, 2013 | 1:16 AM EST

Here are two things the major liberal media outlets aren't telling you.

While guns have dominated the national political dialogue, the clock is ticking on Obama’s budget, and he’s already admitted he will yet again be late, missing the Feb. 4 deadline mandated by federal law.  What's more, for a president who originally campaigned on continuing to create jobs and economic growth for the American middle class, Mr. Obama has not met with his job council in one year, last meeting with the brain trust on January 17, 2012. 

Politico Predicted Obama Would Face 'Hard Questions' On Sequestration, Benghazi Security; He Didn't
By Ken Shepherd | November 14, 2012 | 3:45 PM EST

Apparently the folks at Politico think the White House press corps is set to be tougher on the president at press conferences in his second term than they're actually proving to be.

As my colleague Tom Blumer noted, early this morning, Politico's Carrie Budoff Brown and Josh Gerstein posited seven "hard questions" they anticipated being raised at today's presidential press conference. "[W]hen he holds his first full-scale news conference in eight months Wednesday, Obama will have to explain how he plans to re-create his national security team, what he knows about the burgeoning [Petraeus] scandal and why he didn’t get wind of it sooner, " Budoff Brown and Gerstein noted, adding, "It’ll probably leave him longing to talk more about the fiscal cliff, the less titillating storyline of the week." The Politico writers then listed seven questions that they anticipated would be asked. Some of the predicted questions ended up being asked in some form or another, but I've excerpted below the ones which didn't get pressed in any fashion at all (emphasis mine):

Politico Pair Goes to Pot in Listing Seven Questions It Believes the Press Will Ask Obama Today
By Tom Blumer | November 14, 2012 | 9:55 AM EST

Unless today is a total surprise and runs contrary to most of what we've seen during the past four years, President Obama will go through another "news conference" without a great deal of difficult or aggressive questioning from the assembled press corps.

Carrie Budoff Brown and Josh Gerstein at the Politico seem to think otherwise, and have produced a lame list of seven questions they think Obama will be asked -- so lame that one of them has to do with recently passed marijuana-legalizing initiatives in the states of Washington and Colorado:

Now Politico Notices: 'Obama's Foreign Policy Team Hits Turbulence'
By Tom Blumer | November 13, 2012 | 11:57 PM EST

Suddenly discovering something that anyone with eyes could see before the election, Josh Gerstein at Politico tells us that "Obama's foreign policy team hits turbulence."

Please. For over a week after September 11, the administration was pretending that a video which wasn't relevant at all caused protests which never occurred were what supposedly led to the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya which killed four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens. We had different people in the administration taking blame (but not really), and learned that but for the heroics of two of the men who died, dozens of others might have perished. But only now is Gerstein discovering "turbulence." Read on for a narrative which would be funny if it were not so sadly symptomatic of a see-no-evil press corps:

Obama on 'The View': U.S. Would 'Survive' But Not 'Thrive' in a Romney Presidency: Politico's Gerstein Ignores Past 44 Months
By Tom Blumer | September 25, 2012 | 8:50 AM EDT

He clearly doesn't suffer from a shortage of chutzpah.

According to the Politico's Josh Gerstein, President Barack Obama was asked the following question by The View's Barabara Walters in a Monday appearance to be broadcast on Tuesday: "What would be so terrible if Mitt Romney were elected? Would it be disastrous for the country?" His response: "We can survive a lot. But the American people don't want to just survive. We want to thrive. I've just got a different vision of how we grow an economy. We grow fastest when the middle class is doing well."

While Broadcast Media Buys 'Severe Weather' Excuse for Moving Obama Speech, Townhall, Politico Are Skeptical
By Matt Vespa | September 5, 2012 | 10:26 PM EDT

If you have tickets for the Democratic National Convention and wanted to see President Barack Obama deliver his acceptance speech this Thursday at Charlotte's Bank of America Stadium, you’ll be greatly disappointed.  Despite the official excuse of severe weather -- forecasters put the chance of storms at 20-30 percent -- the change in venue really seems to be because Obama campaign officials fear they can't fill the 74,000-seat stadium.

Reporting that, of course, is unfathomable for the lapdog broadcast media, but some print and online reporters are skeptical.

Obama Contradicts Holder and Others on Iran's in-U.S. Terror Capability; Lauer Seemingly Clueless
By Tom Blumer | February 7, 2012 | 9:26 PM EST

In his pre-Super Bowl interview with Matt Lauer on Sunday, President Obama was asked the following question about Iran in light of the heightening tensions over its nuclear program and the possibility of an Israeli air strike: "(In repsonse) Do you fear that they will wage attacks within the United States on American soil?" Obama responded as follows: "We don't see any evidence that they have those intentions or capabilities right now."

Really? The President's statement directly goes against statements made recently by other government officials, up to and including Attorney General Eric Holder. Lauer, who is paid to look good while delivering the news and conducting interviews but not necessarily to deliver on substance, especially if it might disturb the American people before the Big Game, totally missed the contradiction. Fortunately, Ed Lasky at American Thinker didn't (internal links added by me):

WaPo Farms Out 10th Anniversary USS Cole Coverage, Omits Anger Over Obama Handling of Case
By Ken Shepherd | October 13, 2010 | 1:36 PM EDT

Ten years after the USS Cole bombing, the alleged mastermind of the attacks hasn't been tried in a military commission, angering survivors and families of the dead.

Yet for its coverage of the 10 year anniversary memorial service in today's paper, the Washington Post elected to go with an 11-paragraph article by Newport News [Va.] Daily Press's Hugh Lessig rather than assign a Post staffer to the story.

Here's how Lessig opened his story:

Krauthammer: Classified Leaks in Bush and Nixon Years Got You a Pulitzer Prize, With a Dem President You're Condemned
By Noel Sheppard | August 7, 2010 | 1:23 AM EDT

Charles Krauthammer on Friday made a truly wonderful observation about how differently the media handle leaks of classified information depending on whether there's a Democrat or a Republican in the White House.

As the discussion on PBS's "Inside Washington" moved to the Wikileaks affair, the Washington Post's Colby King said, "I don't see it as such a difficult issue at all for the Pentagon. It's, you know, it's our material, it's not [Wikileaks']."

This led Krauthammer to ask, "How come in the Bush years and the Nixon years, when you leaked stuff that's our material, classified material, you end up with a Pulitzer Prize, and now if you have a Democratic administration, you end up being condemned from left and right?"

He continued, "I'm not sure I understand" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Shocking Headline: 'Some on Left Souring on Obama'
By Noel Sheppard | May 17, 2009 | 1:54 PM EDT

Here's a headline you'd never expect to see at a left-of-center website so soon in the new President's first term:

Some on Left Souring on Obama

Maybe even more shocking was the content in Josh Gerstein's Politico piece that was so prominently placed as the feature story on the site's front page Sunday: