The White House responded Thursday to a scathing indictment of President Obama’s strategy in the midterm elections from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s chief of staff, insisting that Obama and Reid have a “historic relationship” and aren’t at odds with one another.
“I don’t think [the remarks] actually reflect the true nature of the relationship that exists between President Obama and Senator Reid,” White House press secretary Josh Earnest said.
“You can go ask the — you know, some staffers in Senator Reid’s office about their opinion,” he added. “What I’m going to point to are actually the results of what has, I think, been fairly observed by others as a genuinely historic relationship between the president of the United States and the Senate majority leader.”
A growing number of Democrats have accused the president of not being actively involved in the midterms, which they attributed to the party’s dismal showing on Tuesday.
“We were never going to get on the same page,” Reid’s chief of staff, David Krone, said in an article published by the Washington Post. “We were beating our heads against the wall.”
Obama and Reid will have the opportunity to mend fences Friday, when the Republican and Democratic congressional leadership teams meet with the president at the White House.
