This is why Jay Carney is Obama’s press propaganda minister. When asked about when Obama learned about the scandal engulfing the VA which left at least 40 veterans dead, Carney claimed that Obama just heard about it ‘recently’ from ‘news reports’. Problem is, this is complete and utter bullshit. Veterans Affairs officials warned the Obama-Biden transition team in the weeks after the 2008 presidential election that the department shouldn’t trust the wait times that its facilities were reporting. Yes, the VA was screwed up under Dubya also, so Obama could claim he ‘inherited’ the problem from Bush. But while the VA was screwed up under Bush, it’s gotten far worse under King Obama.
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| Carney lies, claims Obama learned about VA scandal from news reports (actually knew six years ago) |
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President Barack Obama first learned of the scandal involving Department of Veterans Affairs hospital administrators concealing the true wait times vets faced in the press, according to a claim made by White House Press Sec. Jay Carney on Monday. While the president may have not been aware of the falsified wait lists, however, reports indicate that his administration was informed of excessive wait times at the VA as early as 2008. Obama even campaigned on the issue of VA waiting lists in 2007.
“When was the president first made aware of these problems?” CNN reporter Jim Acosta asked. “These fraudulent lists that were being kept to hide the wait times?”
“You mean the specific allegations that were first reported by your network out of Phoenix, I believe, we learned about them through reports,” Carney replied. “That’s when, as I understand, Sec. [Eric] Shinseki learned about them.”