Ben Rhodes

And one of them is, like, if a bad thing happens in the world, right?

I think this was around, like, 2013.

Like, pick any one of these countries.

In our media, there's like five paragraphs that describe the bad thing that happened and why it happened.

And then by paragraph six, it's like, and what could we possibly perhaps do to help address this issue?

In America, it's like...

Bad thing happened.

Where's Obama?

You know, this kind of bizarre.

And again, this really is the media.

And I don't fully understand why.

I mean, I remember in Libya, you know, Jake Tapper, you know, yelling in the briefing room, like how many more have to die before you put in place the no fly zone?

And we did, you know, but I remember thinking like it.

I'm glad he cares about the people of Libya today, but it's a strange impulse that the media thinks its job is to hold the president accountable for every bad thing that's happening in the world.

And I know I'm sounding sour grapes here.

I'm not, because I actually think this is a structural problem.

This is not an Obama issue or even a Trump issue.

Why is it that we insist that our presidents... I think this may be a post-World War II, a Cold War kind of fear thing, where it's like, why do we insist that our presidents...

I mean, there's another thing Plattner told me, like there's literally like kind of a commander-in-chief test where you have to show that you're willing to bomb civilians to be credible or something.

Right.