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White House on damage control after top aide admits manipulating media and lying to public on Iran nuke deal

May 14, 2016 10:29 am By Robert Spencer

The garrulous and arrogant Obama aide Ben Rhodes spilled the beans on how the Obama White House plays the mainstream media like a marionette. Now the marionette press is busy dancing to the Obama White House line that it doesn’t tell the media what to say.

The New York Times’ profile of Rhodes was not intended to do any damage at all; it was effusive and gushed over the wonder boy it dubbed “Obama’s foreign-policy guru.” “Rhodes strategized and ran the successful Iran-deal messaging campaign,” according to Times reporter David Samuels. Indeed: Samuels’ profile showed that Obama, Rhodes, and other administration officials deliberately misled the public about the Iran deal.

Rhodes’ assistant Ned Price explained to Samuels how the Obama administration would “shape the news” by reaching out to friendly reporters and columnists: “We have our compadres, I will reach out to a couple people…I’ll say, ‘Hey, look, some people are spinning this narrative that this is a sign of American weakness,’ but — ” Samuels, himself a friendly reporter, finished his thought: “In fact it’s a sign of strength!” Price went on: “And I’ll give them some color, and the next thing I know, lots of these guys are in the dot-com publishing space, and have huge Twitter followings, and they’ll be putting this message out on their own.”

Nowhere was the media more thoroughly manipulated into presenting weakness and strength than with the Iran nuclear deal. Samuels reveals that “the way in which most Americans have heard the story of the Iran deal presented — that the Obama administration began seriously engaging with Iranian officials in 2013 in order to take advantage of a new political reality in Iran, which came about because of elections that brought moderates to power in that country — was largely manufactured for the purpose for selling the deal. Even where the particulars of that story are true, the implications that readers and viewers are encouraged to take away from those particulars are often misleading or false.”

The chief false and misleading aspect of Obama’s presentation of the deal to the American public was his claim that he was dealing with moderate elements of Iran’s Islamic regime – according to Samuels, a “narrative that Rhodes shaped.” Rhodes propagated the falsehood that Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, elected in 2013, was a “moderate” who was struggling against “hard-liners” within the regime. Samuels describes this as “actively misleading,” and notes that “the idea that there was a new reality in Iran was politically useful to the Obama administration. By obtaining broad public currency for the thought that there was a significant split in the regime, and that the administration was reaching out to moderate-minded Iranians who wanted peaceful relations with their neighbors and with America, Obama was able to evade what might have otherwise been a divisive but clarifying debate over the actual policy choices that his administration was making.”

Samuels hears from no less an authority than former CIA director Leon Panetta that this was all a lie: “I ask him about a crucial component of the administration’s public narrative on Iran: whether it was ever a salient feature of the C.I.A.’s analysis when he ran the agency that the Iranian regime was meaningfully divided between ‘hard-line’ and ‘moderate’ camps.”

Panetta responded: “No. There was not much question that the Quds Force and the supreme leader ran that country with a strong arm, and there was not much question that this kind of opposing view could somehow gain any traction.”

The entire Obama case for the Iran deal was based on a lie.

Ben Rhodes

“White House on damage control after aide’s magazine profile,” by Kathleen Hennessey, Associated Press, May 10, 2016:

WASHINGTON (AP) — The White House on Monday worked to contain the damage caused by one of President Barack Obama’s closest aides, who, in a seemingly candid, behind-the-curtain magazine story, ripped the Washington press corps, boasted of creating an “echo chamber” of supporters to sell the Iran nuclear deal and appeared to dismiss long-time foreign policy hands, including Hillary Clinton, as the Blob.

Deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes’ comments to The New York Times Magazine have sparked a mix of bewilderment and outrage in Washington’s political and policy circles. While some marveled at a savvy White House aide’s apparent eagerness to discuss what some consider the ugly sausage making of modern governing, other noted he’d kicked up a hornet’s nest of a debate over whether the White House oversold the legacy-burnishing deal to curb Iran’s nuclear program.

The article revived criticism of the agreement. In a statement issued Monday, Sen. John McCain, a long-time critic of the Iran pact, said the piece “provided a troubling glimpse of the White House spin machine that has put sustaining ‘the narrative’ above advancing the national interest.”

The piece portrays Rhodes, Obama’s top foreign policy speechwriter and arguably one of his most influential aides, as singularly in tune with his boss’s thinking and narrowly focused on crafting a messaging machine to support it. It quotes Rhodes lamenting the ignorance of Washington reporters. (“They literally know nothing.”) And it describes Rhodes, a former aspiring novelist, as focused on crafting a storyline and dismissing facts that don’t fit.

Rhodes appears to try to keep secret news that Iran had seized 10 U.S. Navy sailors until after the president’s State of the Union speech. The article quotes Rhodes and his aides describing how they used social media, journalists and friendly interest groups to disseminate White House-generated talking points about the Iran deal.

“We created an echo chamber,” Rhodes said. “They were saying things that validated what we had given them to say.”

Of course they did. When has the mainstream media not been a lapdog for the Democratic Party establishment?

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Filed Under: Barack Obama, Featured, Iran, journalistic bias Tagged With: Ben Rhodes


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Comments

  1. touga says

    May 14, 2016 at 11:18 am

    This situation would make for a very interesting and absorbing fictional story line. Unfortunately, it is non-fiction.

    What beats my imagination is how Obama can be allowed to get away with the wilfully damage he and his administration have caused to America both at home and abroad.

    Big media are wilful co-conspirators in this this treason and must be held equally responsible and so also the other two arms of government, for their wilful ignorance.

    I wonder what provisions there are in the American constitution and legal system for imprisonment of a traitor president after he leaves office. It may be too late now to begin impeachment proceedings on Obama, but he certainly needs to go to prison after he leaves office. I am unaware of any president that has done so much damage to the American people and their psyche as he has.

    Americans shall have sealed their fate and that of their children, if they give him a third term in office by electing Hillary Clinton to the White House come November.

    • Angemon says

      May 14, 2016 at 12:28 pm

      touga posted:

      “What beats my imagination is how Obama can be allowed to get away with the wilfully damage he and his administration have caused to America both at home and abroad.”

      Skin colour.

      • mortimer says

        May 14, 2016 at 12:46 pm

        No…cultural Marxism.

        Cultural Marxism is a series of lies and half-truths used to destroy Western civilization and convince Western people to accept voluntary suicide.

        • Jay Boo says

          May 14, 2016 at 12:48 pm

          No…cultural Muslimism.

        • Bob says

          May 15, 2016 at 9:25 am

          OK, “cultural Marxism” AND skin colour!!

      • Carolyne says

        May 15, 2016 at 11:59 am

        I think it is skin color, plus the fact that they are eager to demonstrate that they are not prejudiced against blacks. It’s sort of an atonement for their real feelings. I think the adoration of Obama actually comes from guilt that they feel African Americans really are inferior. Sort of protesting too much.

        I personally do not care what color Obama is. He is as much white as he is black. It is his destruction of the US which makes me oppose him. It is his Islamic belief which is conquering the. He is one of them and he is winning. He is merely obeying the Koran.

        • Eagle says

          May 15, 2016 at 4:04 pm

          Carolyne, I agree with you. This Muslim we have as a president is doing his very best to destroy the US. I see his Islamic belief is all the way to his core. He is following the Koran and has no love for the American people and the constitution of the US. The Muslim President should be sent to Gismo.

  2. Walter Sieruk says

    May 14, 2016 at 11:20 am

    What naive foolishness of Obama and Kerry in their feeling that they can have a “genuine deal” with the mullahs and ayatollahs and others power in this rogue Islamic tyrannical regime of Iran. It seem the those two politicians, Obama and Kerry, are as gullible as the mullahs are their officials are insincere , disingenuous and outright lying in any of their “negotiations” with the US officials and other leaders in other nations of the West. For example, just this very month a “test firing” of missiles and likewise earlier this year “test firing” of other missiles, shows the gall and defiance of those mullahs and ayatollahs along those other Muslim villains in power in this tyrannical Islamic regime of Iran their total arrogant contempt for the US and the other Western nations in this so called “deal.” Those Muslim clerics and other Muslim tyrants in power in this cruel and oppressive Islamic tyranny are, in character, reflected in the Bible in Psalm 73:6-9. Which reads, “Therefore pride is their necklace; they clothe themselves with violence. From their callous hearts comes iniquity; the evil conceits of their mind know limits. They scoff and speak with malice; in their arrogance they threaten oppression. Their mouths lay claim to heaven, and their tongues take possession of the earth.” [N.I.V.]

    • Michael McGrath says

      May 14, 2016 at 2:05 pm

      That verse seems very applicable to the Executive Order in Chief !

  3. kilfincelt says

    May 14, 2016 at 11:23 am

    Anyone with an ounce of brains wasn’t fooled by the stupidity of the deal. Only a Washington press corp so eager to worship at the feet of their God, Obama, would believe such utter nonsense.

  4. Vyx says

    May 14, 2016 at 11:43 am

    Lots of people were fooled by the Iran deal, especially those who rely on the MSM for news- specifically, senior citizens. They grew up with an unbiased media, and expect it to be the same today. If they don’t have family who is politically motivated, and if they don’t use the internet for their news, the mainstream is the only news they have. And they believe it.

    Sad, but true.

    • Westman says

      May 14, 2016 at 1:06 pm

      There are a few “frosty tops” that watched US intervention in Korea, Vietnam, Panama, Lybia, Serbia, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc, assassinations, black-ops renditions, lying or inept Presidents, the political scandals since Watergate, and have listened to thousands of massaged government lies for 50 years. Seniors don’t buy much of what government says, rather they look at what it is doing with a skeptical eye. This current administration and Congress is slow-moving train still running on the tracks of a previous construction, leading nowhere.

      Every time we go to the Polls there are city and state ballot proposals asking for citizen support – as they should be.

      Name one National goal that US citizens have been asked to support that ever appeared on the ballot of a Presidential or any other national election. Name any National goal, since the Space Program to put a man on the moon, that reached fruition. Great Society? Energy Independence? Banking Reform? Peace in the ME?

      Seniors deceived into thinking the Iran deal, negotiated by screaming neck-vessel-popping Iranians, meant anything? Very few.

      The future of Iran under a theocratic tyrant? War.

    • linnte says

      May 14, 2016 at 5:11 pm

      There is truth in what you say, but….in my circle of old people, we are the opposite. When the “news” started to be bull puckie, we old hippy radicals began to see it. And we are the “conspiracy theorists” now. It’s our children who believe the news. Many folks I know of my age see right through the lies of mainstream media. I raised my sons to see through it too. Some parents didn’t. Their kids are the adults now who think politically correct is the way to go 🙁 But, I think the average American old person believes like you said.

    • Kepha says

      May 14, 2016 at 6:24 pm

      I’m with several of my fellow seniors here.

      I am 63 years old, and a grandfather. A lot of us became aware of media bias very early on, and went out and read magazines like National Review and Commentary to get the other side of the picture back when we were a lot younger. It never surprises me when the MSM starts to backpeddle on an issue (Ice Age Comin!–global warming apocalypse!–er, um, climate change). Although trained by screaming Leftists as a Sinologist, yet the puffery of Mao Zedong and the touting of Deng Xiaoping always disgusted me.

      Perhaps the first disillusionment with the media-created worldview came when, after growing up to believe all the stereotypes of conservative Christians, I actually met a few.

      It’s why I’ll always be an advocate of a free press and free speech. Sure, we’ll get trash put out. But using free press and free speech rights can get the truth out there, despite the massive phalanx of lies erected by a manipulative media-government-academic complex.

      And, thanks, Ben Rhodes. I love it when an arrogant little twat like you arrogantly admits that he takes the American people for a nation of sheep and that he’s been trying to fool us. You’re a professor of creative writing. Maybe you ought to go back to your old job and write a few novels.

      • Keys says

        May 14, 2016 at 9:45 pm

        Kepha, your last paragraph reminds me of another Obama manipulator (not Lois Lerner who took the 5th, or Sunday liar, Susan Rice ), Obamacare architect, Jonathan Gruber:

        “Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage. And basically, call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically that was really really critical to get for the thing to pass. Look, I wish Mark was right that we could make it all transparent, but I’d rather have this law than not.”

        The most transparent administration !

      • Carolyne says

        May 15, 2016 at 12:02 pm

        He and his ilk are writing novels, with the American people as their leading characters.

    • Custos Custodum says

      May 15, 2016 at 5:03 am

      “Television is to news what bumper stickers are to philosophy.”

      -Richard M. Nixon

      Isn’t it funny how Nixon seems to gain in stature while “great” presidents shrink? (And BTW callous anti-constitutional activists like Wilson and FDR will be in the fractional-inch range once the next generation of historians is done with them.)

  5. mortimer says

    May 14, 2016 at 12:45 pm

    “We committed revolutionary suicide protesting the conditions of an inhumane world.” – Jim Jones

    Meaning while the Western elites tell us, ‘Just drink the Kool Aid.’

    By filling the West with inassimilable Muslim supremacists, the West is committing ‘revolutionary suicide’.

    • Ed Lee says

      May 14, 2016 at 5:59 pm

      Members of Congress will suffer the same fate at the hands of Muslims as Rep. Leo Ryan did at the hands of Jonestown zealots in Guyana.

  6. mortimer says

    May 14, 2016 at 12:51 pm

    Shi’ite Islam teaches advanced taqiyya already in kindergarten.

    By the time Shi’ites reach university, they practice taqiyya with the smoothness of a Formula 1 race car driver.

    By the time they finish post-graduate degrees, Shi’ites conduct taqiyya with the skill of F-18 fighter pilots.

    The Shi’ite mullahocracy of Iran has a motto: “Why tell the truth when taqiyya will do?”

  7. FuturePresident says

    May 14, 2016 at 1:00 pm

    No more

  8. Custos Custodum says

    May 14, 2016 at 4:39 pm

    How come educated readers e.g. on this site knew all along what was going on, while the “professional” media were ostensibly “misled” by a While House staffer?

    What really happened is that Rhodes told the marionettes what to write, and they dutifully followed his every hint.

    Some people are natural followers, of men or of ideologies. Others are unprincipled or greedy and can be corrupted without much difficulty using the traditional incentives of money, sex, and social status, not necessarily in this order.

    • Kepha says

      May 14, 2016 at 6:25 pm

      You nailed it, Custos Custodum

  9. Ed Lee says

    May 14, 2016 at 5:52 pm

    So, according to the New York Times, Rhodes is “Obama’s foreign-policy guru”? No one should pay too much attention to gurus. The reason ‘guru’ is such a popular word is because ‘charlatan’ is so hard to spell

    • Kepha says

      May 14, 2016 at 6:29 pm

      I get your point, Ed Lee. I’m old enough to remember the Silly ‘Sixties and Sillier ‘Seventies.

      However, in fairness to the folks east of Suez who gave us the term “guru”, it originally was just a teacher, and made its way into Thai (from Sanskrit via Pali and Khmer) to become “khru”–which means the person who teaches you your three r’s or, if you’re an ignorant Farang like me, gets you from absolute zero in that language to at least functionality in it. Nod to one government agency that actually worked well–the Foreign Service Institute’s languages division.

  10. Northern Virginiastan says

    May 14, 2016 at 11:08 pm

    Ben Rhodes also issued an email subject line PREP CALL with Susan that contained talking points for Susan Rice’s blitz on the Sunday morning news talk shows post-Benghazi (but before the 2012 election).“Goal”: “To underscore that these protests are rooted in an Internet video, and not a broader failure or policy.” HT Judicial Watch http://www.judicialwatch.org/press-room/press-releases/judicial-watch-newly-released-documents-confirm-white-house-officials-set-hillary-clintons-benghazi-response/

    Oh, and Ben Rhodes’s brother David is President of CBS News. These details are well-known to JW readers; I’m surprised that no one has brought them up so far.

    • Custos Custodum says

      May 15, 2016 at 4:52 am

      Oh, and Ben Rhodes’s brother David is President of CBS News. These details are well-known to JW readers; I’m surprised that no one has brought them up so far.

      Precisely – this is so well known here, but consistently ignored in authorativate-sounding newstainment reports.

      It used to be hard to keep up with media coverage of specialized subjects by knowledgeable journalists. With too many of the co-opted wretches in the papers and on the air now, it is getting hard to keep track of their actual and ostensible ignorance of simple subject as one tries, Soviet-style, to glean inadvertent crumbs of information out of column feet of turgid propaganda prose.

      • Custos Custodum says

        May 15, 2016 at 5:06 am

        *authoritative (no longer a live term)

  11. BC says

    May 15, 2016 at 4:49 am

    Obama’s ‘legacy’ will be as the man who handed h nuclear weapons to Iran

    • Custos Custodum says

      May 15, 2016 at 4:55 am

      By now, Obama no longer bothers to hide his obvious sympathies and activities, secure in the knowledge that the media will always love to lick-shine his boots.

  12. duh_swami says

    May 15, 2016 at 5:43 am

    The White house has been the ‘White Mosque’ since oi9…When Trump takes over, a complete cleaning is in order along with several exorcisms…

  13. Stephen says

    May 15, 2016 at 10:16 am

    No! Someone in Iman Obama’s administration lied? What is newsworthy is when someone from Obama’s caliphate tells the truth. Which is why nothing newsworthy has ever come from the House of Obama.

  14. Eagle says

    May 15, 2016 at 4:51 pm

    Our Muslim president finds no problem with lying to the American people, Obama is Muslim. Obama lives by the Quran. Obama has no love for the American people and the Constitution of the United States. It will be a fine day when he leaves the oval office for good.

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