Seems like the White House communications team is pretty out of touch with President Barack Obama.
On Thursday, Press Secretary Jay Carney told reporters that the reason the White House accidentally lied about President Barack Obama’s relationship with his uncle, Omar Obama, is because no one ever asked POTUS about it.
Previously, the White House asserted that the President had never met Omar. But on Tuesday, during the course of his ongoing deportation trial, Omar revealed that the future leader of the free world — then just starting law school — had lived with him briefly in the 1980s.
But when Omar’s deportation struggle began and many wondered about his connection to the White House’s famous occupant, no one had thought to ask the president about his father’s half-brother.
“Back when this arose, folks looked at the record, including the president’s book, and there was no evidence that they had met,” Carney said. “And that was what was conveyed. Nobody spoke to the president.”
After Omar’s assertion came out in testimony on Tuesday, however, Carney finally posed the question to the president.
“I thought it was the right thing to do to go ask him [the president],” Carney told reporters. “Nobody had asked him in the past.”
Carney confirmed that the president had stayed with his father’s half-brother for a short period of time — until his own apartment was ready — when he first moved to Cambridge for law school. The two saw each other every few months, but then lost touch after Obama finished got his degree. Carney told the press that the duo hadn’t seen each other in 20 years and hadn’t spoken in 10 years.
Seems like the White House comms team hadn’t spoken to Obama in that long either.
