White House chief of staff Denis McDonough Tuesday said it was his fault President Obama or a more senior official did not attend a unity rally in Paris following the deadliest terrorist attack there in decades.
“We’ve said that we regret we didn’t send somebody more senior than our ambassador,” McDonough said on NBC’s “Today” show. “That rests on me. That’s my job.”
The admission was the first time a White House official directly took the blame for Obama’s no-show in Paris. White House press secretary Josh Earnest previously said it was a mistake not to send somebody more senior than the ambassador to France, Jane Hartley — but declined to say who made the final call.
Republicans have hammered the president for not showing at a rally attended by French President Francois Hollande, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, British Prime Minister David Cameron and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, among other major world leaders.
McDonough said Tuesday that his actions caused a distraction from promoting U.S-French ties in the wake of the attack on the satirical publication Charlie Hebdo.
“That’s what we ought to be focused on. Unfortunately, the decisions I made obfuscated that effort,” McDonough said. “We’re going to make sure that we’re focused on that and working with our friends to make sure that something like this does not happen again.”
