President Barack Obama on Monday forcefully pushed back against critics of his administration’s handling of last year’s deadly attack in Benghazi, Libya, dismissing the debate over the talking points used by United Nations Ambassador Susan Rice as a “sideshow.”
Speaking at a joint press conference alongside British Prime Minister David Cameron, Obama reminded reporters that he used the words “act of terror” the day after the attack and that a review of the failures leading up to the attack conducted by Ambassador Thomas Pickering and Adm. Mike Mullen rendered “some pretty harsh judgments.”
“The whole issue of talking points, frankly throughout this process, has been a sideshow,” Obama said. “What we have been very clear about throughout was that immediately after this event happened, we were not clear who exactly had carried it out, how it had occurred, what the motivations were.”
The President said Republicans are fueled more by politics than unearthing the truth.
“So the whole thing defies logic and the fact that this keeps on getting churned out, frankly has a lot to do with political motivations,” Obama said. “We’ve had folks who have challenged Hillary Clinton’s integrity, Susan Rice’s integrity, Mike Mullen and Tom Pickering’s integrity. It’s a given that mine gets challenged by these same folks. They’ve used it for fundraising.”
