Remember when President Obama invited Paul Ryan to sit in the front row of a speech about deficit reduction — only to attack his budget proposal from the podium?
According to a new PBS FRONTLINE documentary airing Tuesday, it was all a mistake.
“In their haste to put the event together,” a narrator says, “the White House staff made a crucial error” by issuing Ryan a pro forma invitation.
“When I came into the speech, when I saw him in the room, I thought ‘oh my God,” remembers then-White House Chief of Staff Bill Daley.
“Obama with the lights in his eyes they say, ‘Unable to see who’s directly in front of him,’ just launches into a blistering condemnation of the Republican budget and how this is a small and painful vision of a country’s shrinking,” the Washington Post’s Lori Montgomery says.
Watch the clip here: