The Obama administration faces a difficult problem. Diplomacy has failed, despite its best efforts, and the ruthless winner-take-all attitude of its adversary now leaves them but two choices: break off relations or capitulate to its demands.
That adversary, of course, is Fox News — and President Barack Obama finally seems prepared to enforce a hard line against them. In the past week the White House has frozen the top-rated news network out of two key foreign policy interviews provided to other networks — one on Sunday with Secretary of State John Kerry, and one last week with National Security Adviser Susan Rice.
Kerry made the rounds yesterday to discuss the White House’s response to Russia’s Friday invasion of Ukraine, appearing on NBC, CBS and ABC’s Sunday shows to promise a tough (if unspecified) response to Vladimir Putin’s power grab. But Chris Wallace of “Fox News Sunday” was shut out.
“For the record, we invited Secretary of State Kerry to join us today,” Wallace noted at the conclusion of his opening interview. “But although the White House put him out on all the other broadcast Sunday shows, they declined to make him available to us — or you.”
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It was deja vu for Wallace, who reacted similarly after National Security Adviser Susan Rice appeared on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Feb. 23.
“We wanted to ask the Obama administration about the crisis in Ukraine,” he said last week, “but they decided to put National Security Adviser Susan Rice on only one show today, in her first Sunday show appearance since 2012 — when she blamed the Benghazi terror attack on reaction to an anti-Islam video.”
“Of course, Fox has led the way in questioning how the administration handled Benghazi,” Wallace noted. “Perhaps Susan Rice didn’t want to answer the tough questions we would’ve asked.” (RELATED: Stephanopoulos asks Kerry: ‘Any indication at all’ that Putin is listening to Obama?)
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It’s not like the White House completely ignored Fox News this week, however. Powerful Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett appeared on Bill O’Reilly’s program Thursday — to discuss “gangsta” culture and Obama’s pet initiative, “My Brother’s Keeper,” among other topics.
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