An animated and testy President Obama during this presser. Partly a function, I think, of him pushing back hard on two media/GOP narratives: one, that he’s not been strong enough on Iran so that his recent harsher rhetoric amounts to a shift in his position; and, two, that a public option health care plan would put insurance companies out of business.
Will be interested to see if his rejection of those narratives, and particularly his dismissiveness of reporters who perpetuated them, has the desired effect of shifting the narrative.
More broadly, Obama knocked around reporters for some of the gotcha questions, especially on Iran, telling NBC’s Chuck Todd that while the press is on a 24-hour news cycle, “I’m not.”
David Kurtz
David Kurtz is Managing Editor and Washington Bureau Chief of Talking Points Memo where he oversees the news operations of TPM and its sister sites.