White House spin is nothing new, though the press’s frenetic coverage of the Trump administration would have you believe otherwise.
During the Obama years, for example, the White House and its allies had a go-to strategy for dismissing unflattering reports and outright scandals. They would note simply of whatever story threatened to damage the White House that it happened a long time ago, as if the passage of time itself was a defense or an explanation. Instead of “fake news,” they would say “old news.”
Many Obama alumni still use this tactic.
This week, during an appearance on the Fox Business Network, Valerie Jarrett, a former senior adviser for former President Barack Obama, deployed the “old news” method to avoid answering questions about the FBI’s dubious explanations for why it spied on President Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.
“It [was] nearly four years ago,” said Jarrett of the spying scandal. “And I don’t understand why our focus isn’t on what’s happening now.”
Host Maria Bartiromo interjected, “What’s happening right now is we are learning the details of what took place and we are getting official confirmation that the FBI knew that the [Steele dossier] was garbage and made up in a bar because the sub-source of the dossier told FBI officials in early January.”
Jarrett dodged again, arguing instead that the spying scandal is simply irrelevant now.
“If people want to have an investigation about what happened four years ago, they should do that,” she said. “But aren’t you concerned about what’s going on right now? Aren’t you worried about the integrity of our upcoming elections?”
This is classic Obama-era behavior. It is like being in 2008–16 all over again, back when the White House and its allies, from press secretaries to former secretaries of state, regularly dismissed scandals by declaring them old news.
In 2014, for example, then-White House press secretary Josh Earnest waved off a damning Washington Post report implicating several administration officials in the 2012 Cartagena, Colombia, prostitution scandal, claiming the incident was just so long ago.
“[S]upposed WaPo ‘exclusive’ was previously reported by AP, CBS, ABC, Politico, The Hill & others — 2 years ago,” he tweeted.
That same year, Tommy Vietor, who was by then a former National Security spokesman, scoffed at questions about the misleading talking points the White House sent out in 2012 on the night of the terrorist attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya.
“Dude, this was two years ago,” Vietor said after Fox News’s Bret Baier asked him whether he was the administration official who changed the CIA’s talking points so that they referred to the attacks as “demonstrations.”
“We’re still talking about the most mundane thing,” said the former Obama staffer.
Earlier, in 2013, then-White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said something similar about the incident that cost the lives of four United States citizens, including a U.S. ambassador.
“Let’s be clear,” Carney said in response to a question about whether the administration was blocking whistleblowers from testifying about attacks. “Benghazi happened a long time ago.”
And for good measure, let us not forget Obama administration alumna Hillary Clinton, who also cited the passage of time after reports showed in 2016 that the $400 million the White House paid to Tehran overlapped with Iran agreeing to release American hostages.
“The White House has addressed this,” the former secretary of state said. “This is kind of old news.”
Valerie Jarrett’s appearance this week on the Fox Business Network is merely a reminder that the Trump administration is not the first to declare simply that its scandals are non-stories. Also, given that the “old news” tactic was the go-to strategy for the Obama administration, it should not surprise you to see that Jarrett is still leaning on this trick, even years removed from the White House.
In fact, you could almost say it is old news.
