Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will make a statement from the State Department shortly, then she and president Obama will make a joint appearance in the White House Rose Garden at 10:35 a.m. ET.
CNN anchor Carol Costello goes on the air and reads US Embassy statement and Romney condemnation without noting that Embassy statement was released prior to the attacks.
10:51 PM: If I’m not mistaken Wolf Blitzer just did the same thing. Amazing.
Here’s the rush transcript of Blitzer’s remarks …
Mitt Romney just a little while before the president issued a very strong statement himself, condemning these attacks but at the same time the same time condemning the initial statement by the US Embassy in Cairo which was clearly a misguided statement that went after those who produced these kinds of films. And didn’t directly, directly condemn those who attacked the US Embassy in Cairo.
Again, if the press reports are accurate, the statement came before the attacks. So it couldn’t condemn a future event.
Some moments show you when a candidate is ready or not to become President of the United States. I suspect last night will become one of those moments for Mitt Romney. The verdict will not be positive.
As I noted last night, when the full scale of the events in Cairo and Benghazi remained unknown, the Romney campaign let fly a crude political attack both blaming the Obama administration for the attacks and suggesting that the President actually sympathized with them. This was after it was known that an as yet-unnamed Foreign Service Officer (later identified as Sean Smith) had died.
When even Mark Halperin can’t find a good angle for Romney’s stunt, it’s gotta be bad.
Unless the Romney campaign has gamed this crisis out in some manner completely invisible to the Gang of 500, his doubling down on criticism of the President for the statement coming out of Cairo is likely to be seen as one of the most craven and ill-advised tactical moves in this entire campaign.
Virtually no GOP elected officials follow Romney in his attacks on Obama over Libya attacks.
Earlier this year, the State Department produced this video with Chris Stevens as he was preparing to assume his duties as ambassador to Libya: Read More
Scenes from the attack in Benghazi and yesterday’s demonstrations outside the U.S embassy in Cairo.
President Obama’s appearance in the Rose Garden this morning. Watch.