President Obama and the White House are regrouping after an onslaught of criticism over the president’s decision not to show up in Paris Sunday or send a high-profile surrogate to take part in an anti-terrorism solidarity march.
White House spokesman Josh Earnest quickly and repeatedly conceded that not sending a high-ranking official to the march was a mistake and admitted that both Obama and Vice President Joe Biden were sitting at home on Sunday with no official duties.
“I think it’s fair to say we should have sent someone with a higher profile,” Earnest told reporters at his daily briefing Monday, stressing the administration’s strong support for France, its cooperation in intelligence matters and its offer of additional assistance in the aftermath of the attack. Leaders from around the world joined the march this weekend to mark Islamist attacks on a satirical magazine and a kosher grocery in the City of Lights.
The State Department quickly announced that Secretary John Kerry would visit Paris later this week, although a Kerry spokeswoman struggled to explain why the decision wasn’t made more quickly.
Although Earnest said he didn’t want to get into details involved with Secret Service presidential security plans, he implied that the trip came together too quickly — with only a 36-hour lead time — for the agency to plan for a visit by Obama or Biden.
“I can tell you … had the circumstances been different, the president himself would have liked to have been there,” Earnest added.
Earnest also faced questions about whether Obama believed the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo may have brought the tragedy on itself for publishing cartoons lampooning the Islamic prophet Mohammed.
In 2012, then-White House press secretary Jay Carney questioned the editorial judgment of the magazine for publishing the cartoons even though he said he believed it had the right to do so.
Earnest said Carney had stressed in his comments at the time that the magazine’s content “did not in any way justify an act of violence.”
“That was true then, it was true last week, and it’s true today,” he said.
But Earnest also made the point that certain responsibilities accompany the right to exercise freedom of speech. Under that scenario, in 2012, Earnest said there was a “genuine concern” that the publication of some of the magazine’s material could put Americans abroad at risk.
“That is something the commander in chief takes very seriously,” he said.
In 2012 while speaking to the U.N. General Assembly the same month of the Benghazi attacks and protests over an anti-Islamic video in Egypt, Obama discouraged attempts to satirize or publicly ridicule Mohammed.
“The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam,” he said. “But to be credible, those who condemn that slander must also condemn the hate we see in the images of Jesus Christ that are desecrated, or churches that are destroyed or the Holocaust that is denied.”
Obama unconditionally defends free speech in the same speech, and the White House said Obama, and Earnest in his comments Monday, were trying to make the point that everyone has the right to free speech but that they hope there will be a future in which people don’t want to offend one another.
They were trying to say that “we should all be free to say whatever we want, but that we all also hope to have a future where people don’t want to attack or offend each other,” White House spokesman Eric Schultz told the Washington Examiner. “You don’t have to agree with the comments to say there’s a right to make them.”
The Obama administration also took concrete “precautionary” actions to protect the country from a terrorist threat and demonstrate that the federal government is doing all it can to respond to the Paris attacks.
On Friday, the State Department issued a heightened threat alert for global travelers.
And on Monday the Homeland Security Department stepped up security at a growing list of federal facilities around the country.
DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson announced the move, noting it is only precautionary and not based on any specific, credible threat. The new layer of security at these facilities, he said, will build on action he took back in October to ratchet up protection on government offices in D.C. and other major cities and locations around the country.
“We have no specific, credible intelligence of an attack of the kind in Paris last week being planned by terrorist organizations in this country,” Johnson said in a statement. “But, the reasons for these measures should be self-evident to the public: the recent attacks in Paris, Ottawa, Sydney, and elsewhere, along with the recent public calls by terrorist organizations for attacks on Western objectives, including aircraft, military personnel, and government installations and civilian personnel.”
“We urge Americans to continue to travel, attend public events, and freely associate with others. However, given world events, this is a time for heightened vigilance by federal, state and local governments, critical infrastructure owners and operators, as well as the public,” continued Johnson.
In addition, the Transportation Security Administration is imposing more random searches of passengers and carry-on luggage boarding aircraft at U.S. airports, and to conduct an “immediate, short-term review” to determine whether more stringent steps are necessary at both domestic and overseas “last-point of departure” airports.
U.S. intelligence agencies and the FBI also are issuing joint bulletins to state and local law enforcement agencies and working with France and other counter-terrorism allies to share information about terrorist threats and suspicious individuals.
Johnson said DHS also will continue to reach out and engage with community organizations across the country on the topic of countering violent extremism.
Since announcing the community outreach initiative last year, Johnson has met with community leaders in Columbus, Ohio, Chicago, Minneapolis, Boston and Los Angeles and plans to continue to reach out to leaders in other cities around the country.
The White House plans to hold a summit on countering violent extremism on Feb. 18.
