White House press secretary Jay Carney had a tough week last week concluding with an absolutely deplorable press conference wherein he continued to spin totally unbelievable yarns about the administration's talking points regarding Benghazi.
This led George Will to say on ABC's This Week Sunday that Carney's "usefulness to this administration is diminishing rapidly" (video follows with transcript and commentary):
MARTHA RADDATZ, SUBSTITUTE HOST: And they got those talking points out there. George Will, is this going to last? Is this going to have a lasting effect as an unacceptable way to do business at the White House?
GEORGE WILL: Lasting. A week ago, Mr. Carney - who's usefulness to this administration is diminishing rapidly - a week ago he said Benghazi was a long time ago as if it was the Punic Wars. This is a very live issue, because we now know three things.
We know that Mr. Hicks, the night of the attack, speaking from Libya, said pretty much what it was, an armed interaction, not a movie review conducted with rocket-propelled grenades and mortars.
Five days later on this program and on four other Sunday morning programs, the idea of an exceptionally boisterous movie review was still the administration's position.
And then, 14 days after the attack, at the UN, it was the same thing.
We started out with three arguments. Was security lax in Benghazi? Demonstrably. Could forces have been there to rescue them? Doubtful. Has the nation been systemically misled? Certainly.
Now, we need a select committee in congress because the State Department's misnamed accountability review board neglected to interview even the secretary of state.
For a change I'm not sure I agree with Will.
The question is what kind of a press secretary does Obama want at this time.
If he's looking for someone that appears comfortable defending the indefensible - no matter how outlandish or absurd - in the face of immutable facts that completely refute his position, Carney appears to be the right guy.
That is unless Baghdad Bob is available.
