White House spokesman Jay Carney Wednesday ducked, dodged and dived to escape questions about two top Democrats embroiled in sex scandals.
The simultaneous scandals have been caused by a Democratic candidate for New York mayor, Anthony Weiner, and the Democratic mayor of San Diego, Bob Filner. Their sexting and harassment of women have humiliated many Democrats, including those who have happily spent the last few years charging the GOP with waging a “war on women.”
Obama is flying into the Filner scandal because he has announced an Aug. 7 visit to a U.S. Marine Corps base outside San Diego, Calif.
“The president is traveling to Camp Pendleton which is not in San Diego, which is outside,” Carney said July Wednesday. “I don’t have anything on that.”
“He’s commander in chief. He doesn’t oversee municipalities. … I don’t have any comment on that,” he said.
Filner is facing accusations of sexual harassment from eight women, including city employees.
“He pulled my hand closer to him and he reached over to kiss me,” said Lisa Curtin, a city college administrator, about an episode in 2011 when Filner was a Democratic member of Congress. “I turned my head at that moment and on the side of my face, I got a very wet, saliva-filled kiss including feeling his tongue on my cheek.”
Asked about Weiner, who sent crudely sexual tests to women, Carney also evaded comment.
“No, we don’t” want to comment, he said.
Weiner has admitted send sexually themed texts to a series of women, even after he resigned in disgrace from Congress in 2011.
“i must have cum thinking about you and looking at you 100 times,” the former legislator wrote to a 22 year-old woman. “how does that make you feel? gross?”
Through the 2012 election, Obama’s deputies — including Carney — slammed GOP candidates and legislators for rude or insensitive comments about women. Obama’s allies characterized those comments as reflective of GOP attitudes, and declared them to be part of a GOP “war on women.”
The strategy was intended to spur turnout by women voters, and mostly succeeded.
“After spending months waging a fake ‘War on Women’ to mislead voters, it appears the Democrats have much less ‘courage’ when it comes to calling out their own … War on Women,” said a July 31 email from GOP spokesman Kirsten Kukowski
Since 2012, the president has changed his talking point to emphasize curbs on guns and increased immigration of Democratic-leaning low-skilled workers in the country, where 20 million Americans are already unemployed or underemployed.
“The president is focused on what we can do here in Washington to help the middle class,” Carney insisted July 31.
“I understand the allure of issues like this in the media,” Carney said. “But I’m saying that the president believes his job is not to comment on those issues, but to do what we can do to get the economy moving.”
