Update (5:53 PM ET): President Barack Obama reportedly refused to provide a direct answer to repeated questions on whether requests for help in Benghazi were denied as the attack was underway during an interview with 9News in Denver on Friday.
Kyle Clark, a reporter with 9News, asked the president about the requests for help and whether or not it was fair to make Americans wait for answers on Benghazi until after the election.
“The election has nothing to do with four brave Americans getting killed and us wanting to find out exactly what happened,” Obama said. “Nobody wants to find out more what happened than I do.”
The president went on to say he wants to “gather all the facts” and find out “exactly what happened” and bring justice to the terrorists who attacked the U.S. mission in Libya.
“President Obama was directly asked twice whether pleas for help on the ground in Libya were denied during the attack. Both times, he repeated his standard call for a thorough investigation,”9News reports.
Here is Obama’s full response to the question:
“Well, we are finding out exactly what happened. I can tell you, as I’ve said over the last couple of months since this happened, the minute I found out what was happening, I gave three very clear directives. Number one, make sure that we are securing our personnel and doing whatever we need to. Number two, we’re going to investigate exactly what happened so that it doesn’t happen again. Number three, find out who did this so we can bring them to justice. And I guarantee you that everyone in the state department, our military, the CIA, you name it, had number one priority making sure that people were safe. These were our folks and we’re going to find out exactly what happened, but what we’re also going to do it make sure that we are identifying those who carried out these terrible attacks.”
Watch that portion of the interview here:
Clark’s line of questioning was seemingly different than the president usually faces from a media that has been friendly to him.
The 9News reporter also asked Obama about his previous calls for more “civility” in the race, calling him out for calling Romney a “bullsh**ter in a Rolling Stone interview.
“What did you mean and why did you choose that word?” he asked.
“You know, this was a conversation after an interview, a casual conversation with a reporter,” Obama explained.
“The basic point that I’ve been talking about throughout this campaign, is people know what I mean and they know that I mean what I say and what I care about, who I’m fighting for and you know a major issue in any election is can you count on the person you’re putting into the Oval Office fighting for you having a clear set of convictions that they believe in.”
Finally, Obama was asked to address his administration’s decision to give stimulus funds to Abound Solar, a Colorado company with ties to one of the president’s billionaire fundraisers. The company has since gone out of business and is now under criminal investigation, Clark reports.
After laughing, Obama said: “Well, Kyle, I think that if you look at our record that these loans that are given out by the Department of Energy for clean energy have created jobs all across the country and only about four percent of these loans were going to some very cutting-edge industries that are going to allow us to figure out how to produce energy in a clean, renewable way in the future and create jobs in Colorado and all around the country.”
Watch the interaction here:
President Barack Obama reportedly refused to provide a direct answer to repeated questions on whether requests for help in Benghazi were denied as the attack was underway during an interview with 9News in Denver on Friday.
Kyle Clark, a reporter with 9News, posted the following message on Twitter:
As soon as the video is edited, Clark tweeted, the footage will be posted online. We will update this story accordingly.
Earlier today, ABC’s Jake Tapper tweeted that a CIA spokesperson said “No one at any level in the CIA told anybody not to help those in need; claims to the contrary are simply inaccurate.”
However, “no one at any level in the CIA” does not cover the entire Obama administration. Check back for updates to this story.
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