“If Sen. McCain and Sen. [Lindsey] Graham and others want to go after somebody, they should go after me,” Obama said during his first news conference since Election Day. “And I’m happy to have that discussion with them. But for them to go after the U.N. ambassador, who had nothing to do with Benghazi and was simply making a presentation based on intelligence that she had received, and to besmirch her reputation is outrageous"It was the standout moment in an otherwise sedate meeting with the White House press corps. The usually calm, disciplined president gave way to the Obama who gets peeved at what he views as silly political games. And in doing so, Obama served up a blunt reminder that — despite his own words to the contrary — little about Washington has changed since he won a second term.
In explaining why Obama reacted so viscerally, White House aides pointed out that McCain and Graham received the same talking points from intelligence officials that Rice used when she claimed the Benghazi attack was caused by an anti-Islamic video. They also said Republican senators defended Condoleezza Rice, President George W. Bush’s national security adviser, when she repeated faulty intelligence in the lead-up to the Iraq War.
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