Obama Talks Debates, Libya Attack On ‘The Daily Show’

President Barack Obama sat down for a wide-ranging interview with Jon Stewart on Thursday, covering the president’s first debate performance and the administration’s response to the attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya.

“Were you taken aback by the reaction to (the debate)?” Stewart asked. “Did you sense this wasn’t going as well as, perhaps, you would like it to? What happened?”

“I think, obviously I had an off night,” Obama said. “The presentation wasn’t the way it needed to be. But the issues haven’t changed. They didn’t change after the first debate, and they didn’t change in the second debate. And that’s the stakes in this election are really big.”

On the administration’s clumsy response to the attack in Libya that killed four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens, Stewart asked the president to explain the confusion after the violence.

“We weren’t confused about the fact that four Americans had been killed,” Obama said. “I wasn’t confused about the fact that we needed to ramp up diplomatic security around the world right after it happened. I wasn’t confused about the fact that we had to investigate exactly what happened. And I wasn’t confused about the fact that we’re gonna hunt down whoever did it and bring him to justice. Nobody’s more interested in figuring this out than I am.”

Stewart pressed the president to admit that the administration’s response was not “optimal.”

“If four Americans get killed, it’s not optimal,” Obama said.

Stewart also managed to get a lighter question in: “How many times a week does Biden show up in a wet bathing suit to a meeting?”

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