Obama calls on HuffPost for Iran question
In what appeared to be a coordinated exchange, President Obama called on the Huffington Post's Nico Pitney near the start of his press conference and requested a question directly about Iran.
“Nico, I know you and all across the Internet, we've been seeing a lot of reports coming out of Iran,” Obama said, addressing Pitney. “I know there may actually be questions from people in Iran who are communicating through the Internet. Do you have a question?”
Pitney, as if ignoring what Obama had just said [Ed. or awkwardly unable to veer from his script], said: “I wanted to use this opportunity to ask you a question directly from an Iranian.”
He then noted that the site had solicited questions from people in the country “who were still courageous enough to be communicating online.”
“Under which conditions would you accept the election of Ahmadinejad, and if you do accept it without any significant changes in the conditions there, isn't that a betrayal of the — of what the demonstrators there are working towards?”
Reporters typically don’t coordinate their questions for the president before press conferences, so it seemed odd that Obama might have an idea what the question would be. Also, it was a departure from White House protocol by calling on The Huffington Post second, in between the AP and Reuters.
Nice work, Obama. Between planting your own questions and having the teleprompters help you answer them, you've got all the bases covered! No one will ever suspect the feet of clay.
Nice post Gina - I really like your blog!
COMMON CENTS
http://www.commoncts.blogspot.com
ps. Link Exchange??
Posted by: Steve | June 23, 2009 at 02:25 PM