Eric Holder did Meet the Press instead of Paris Solidarity March
Warped priorities.
It was bad enough that none of President Obama, Vice President Biden or Secretary of State Kerry attended Sunday’s Solidarity March in Paris, attended by dozens of world leaders.
It would have been the right thing for Obama to attend. There was enough security to protect obvious targets like the French President, the German Chancellor and the Israeli Prime Minister.
There is no indication that security kept Obama away. But what about Biden, Kerry, or some other very senior official?
France is a key U.S. ally. The attacks in Paris were carried out by followers of groups that also kill Americans. Having at least one senior official, even if not the President, in attendance would have been a no-brainer.
But not with this President. The attacks in Paris did not fit a narrative the administration wants to address.
The problem was not security, but that the Solidarity March was against not just terrorism, but radical Islam and its suppression of free speech and the press through ideological and physical intimidation. That apparently was too much for a President who considers that we are the source of the problem through past behavior.
Eric Holder was in Paris for a security conference. There were rumors that he would represent the U.S. at the march. Surely that would have been an easy, though imperfect, solution.
I watched the march online via live video stream while covering it for Legal Insurrection. I took numerous screen shots of the leaders lined up. I didn’t see Holder anywhere.
News reports confirm Holder did not attend.
Then I flipped channels on the TV to see who was covering the march, and found Holder being interviewed by Chuck Todd on Meet the Press.
I took a couple of snapshots at the time, including the Featured Image.
When people on Twitter wondered where Holder was, I had the answer (apparently no one else was watching Meet the Press):
Why wasn’t Holder there?
A piece of the interview may hold a clue. Holder refused to say that we are at war with radical Islam.
Priorities.
Update: At the end of this video, the State Department spokeswoman says Holder had scheduling problems on Sunday. Uh huh.
AND
Josh Earnest also evaded the question on Islamic extremism, then admitted someone with a higher profile should have attended.
Here’s the segment:
DONATE
Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.
Comments
The dark night of fascism is always descending in the TEA Party and yet lands only in Islam.
…..And now the whole country knows why the Democrats first lost the House, and now the Senate.
Obama: on his way to The View, tee time afterwards
Holder: no blacks were killed, whole situation is irrelevant
Obama couldn’t care less about French workplace violence.
Liberal spin I’m seeing: ‘Open air appearance in Paris too risky for US prez’, and ‘if Obama had gone, GOP would say he was making it all about him’.
You’d have to be awfully narcissistic to be among fifty other world leaders at an event focused on something that happened in France — and think your presence made it all about you.
Have Obama’s defenders finally figured out that he really is a narcissist?
And when did Obama start worrying about what Republicans say about him?
I imagine it was a hell of a lot riskier for any Muslim leader to attend than it would have been for Barack.
I’m not certain there is a difference…
GOP only says Obama makes it all about him when he makes it all about him. He could have gone & made it about them and about terrorism but chose not to. Getting harder and harder to believe he really opposes terrorism, that he doesn’t believe the West deserves it. His words say one thing, his actions quite another, with one exception: to paraphrase, “The future does not belong to those who would slander the Prophet Mohammed.” In light of that comment from one of his UN speeches, his absence makes perfect sense.
I have been ashamed of our country’s executives for some years now.
May I point out what may, if people use it properly, become a public relations embarrassment for Abbas? We are told France didn’t want Netanyahu there, and when he said he was coming, they invited Abbas. So here we have the West Bank leader in public protesting Islamist violence. Why is he against it in Paris but not in his home town? There he is, pushing his way into the front row to stand next to Merkel.
Abbas might pay a price, just not in the media.
Abbas is Fatah, not Hamas. I suspect he thought there was money (foreign aid) at stake.
Obama: “Je suis la chaise vide.”
RFLMAO
Snuck that one in, dincha? Funny. ^ Thread winner ^
Give him a break. Holder was still grieving for his fallen comrades, Cherif and Said Kouachi.
Obama should have sent someone, but as others have pointed out, it was not in his best political interests to do so.
Obama counts on the black and Muslim-sympathetic vote for political collateral. Criticizing even the most radical Muslims/Islamists will reduce his voter base, and he can’t be having that. He and the Democratic party are on the ropes and need every single vote, even if it means bedding with radicals.
It’s sicken to watch, and I am ashamed of my country’s current government.
The only bright spot, the only hope, is that people are waking up – as indicated by the mid-term elections.
Obama is far past the point where his appeasement of radical Islam costs him/his party far more votes than it maintains.
Josh Earnest — the man who’s name is a punch line looking for a joke.
Don’t forget – back in their college days Obbie and Eric had their fun with fighting the establishment. Didn’t Holder participate in criminal activity at Columbia U? And was among those “demanding the former ROTC office be renamed the “Malcolm X Lounge” in honor of the early Black Muslim leader who was assassinated in 1965. http://americanfreepress.net/?p=6588
And Barack’s middle name is Hussein.
Sooooo . . . Maybe these two felt too much hurt from Hebdo – took it too personal.
Maybe they really feel the cartoonists deserved it.
It’s probably better that Holder didn’t go. Nobody in America respects him. Nobody at the rally respects him. HeII, nobody on Planet Earth respects him!
Let’s face facts. the POTUS could have hopped on a commercial airliner, took a handful of SS agents and the wife with him, and not worried about the logistics and the thousands of personnel required to move this man from place to place.
He and the wife could have packed some lunches of the school “food” that swine wouldn’t call slop, and munched on that instead of some of Pari’s finest cuisine.
He would have been perfectly safe. He has become a moot point on the world stage. So why argue for his presence? He had a unique opportunity to gather solidarity to bring together the forces to fight “the enemy that has no name,” a.k.a. Radical Islam. And even though he was a coward before he went, he may not have been one on his return.
Coward that he is, that aside, he should have been there. Not Kerry, not the dingbat Hillary, and certainly not the riot inciter Holder.
If Obama had only done SOMETHING.