“It is entirely legitimate for the American people to be deeply concerned when you’ve got a bunch of violent, vicious zealots who behead people or randomly shoot a bunch of folks in a deli in Paris.” – President Obama
President Obama referred to the Paris shooters as a bunch of violent, vicious zealots in his interview with VOX.com (realclearpolitics.com)
Those are the words of the president from a January interview with VOX.com’s Matt Yglesias made public this week, as he indicated the media overstates the terrorist threat and said his job fighting terrorism was akin to a big city mayor fighting crime.
“A bunch of violent, vicious zealots” is his latest description to avoid referring to Islamic radicals. How are we ever going to defeat the scourge of this barbaric group if our leader stubbornly refuses to properly identify our enemy?
And, surely he doesn’t believe those “zealots,” who openly detest Jews, “randomly” selected a Jewish kosher deli to “randomly” murder its customers, who most certainly would be (and were) Jewish.
Of course, supporters of the president attributed his inappropriate word choice to a lack of a teleprompter. What does that say about his ability to think on his feet?
White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest supported the president’s theory that the Jewish kosher deli shooting was random. (washingtonpost.com)
When ABC News’ White House correspondent Jonathan Karl quizzed the president’s spokesman Josh Earnest on his use of “random,” Earnest continued to obfuscate by saying, “The individuals who were killed in that terrible tragic incident were killed not because who they were, but because of where they randomly happened to be.”
That was his story and he was sticking to it; that is until he got back to his desk, when he tweeted that the attack on the deli “was an act of anti-Semitism, and POTUS (President of the United States) didn’t intend to suggest otherwise.”
State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki didn’t want to speak on behalf of French authorities during her press conference, but later tweeted on the deli shooting. (rt.com)
Jen Psaki, the non-spokesperson for the State Department, refused to comment on the “random” nature of the attack, saying, “I don’t think we’re going to speak on behalf of French authorities and what they believe was the situation at play here.” But she, too, later tweeted, “We have always been clear that the attack on the kosher grocery story was an anti-Semitic attack that took the lives of innocent people.”
Is it any wonder this advertisement was placed in the Federal Register yesterday:
VOCABULARIST WANTED – The government seeks unusually talented individual with special understanding of the Thesaurus and wordsmithing to advise a highly-placed official on alternate word choices to be used in speeches and interviews. Contact your local Social Security employment office to apply.
