White House spokesman Josh Earnest affirmed Monday that the president won’t cancel any of his fundraising events this week despite the major international crises in Israel and Ukraine.
President Barack Obama, who was criticized last week for conducting a burger joint photo op while the downed Malaysian airliner was still smoldering on the ground, will be conducting a series of fundraisers on the west coast in the coming days. (RELATED: Group Claims Obama Wasn’t Technically Fundraising On Day Of Malaysia Air Crash)
When asked whether the White House was “concerned about the image that the president is going to be sending later this week — that he’s on fundraising trips while these two crises are going on at the same time,” Earnest replied that Obama can do his job “from the road” and that they won’t cancel any of his events.
“When the president travels he travels with an array of staff and advisers and communications equipment that allows him to do his job from where ever he happens to be, and that will be the case this week when he’s traveling,” he explained. “We want to make sure that the president has everything he needs to fulfill his responsibilities as the commander in chief and if it becomes clear that there is a need for him to come back to the White House in order to fulfill those functions then we’ll make a change in his schedule. Right now it’s not apparent that that’s the case.”
“It is rarely a good idea to return to the White House just for show, when the situation can be handled responsibly from the road,” White House communications director Jennifer Palmieri said Saturday. “Abrupt changes to his schedule can have the unintended consequence of unduly alarming the American people or creating a false sense of crisis.”