Jason Howerton @ The Blaze:
During the taping of “The Daily Show,” President Barack Obama told Jon Stewart “if four Americans get killed, it’s not optimal” while discussing the deadly terrorist attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya.
Stewart had asked him the following question, according to the pool report: “Is part of the investigation helping the communication between these divisions? Not just what happened in Benghazi, but what happened within…Because I would say, even you would admit, it was not the optimal response, at least to the American people, as far as all of us being on the same page.”
“Here’s what I’ll say,” the president reportedly responded. “If four Americans get killed, it’s not optimal. We’re going to fix it.”
Obama continued:
“And what happens, during the course of a presidency, is that the government is a big operation and any given time something screws up. And you make sure that you find out what’s broken and you fix it. Whatever else I have done throughout the course of my presidency the one thing that I’ve been absolutely clear about is that America’s security comes, and the American people need to know exactly how I make decisions when it comes to war, peace, security, and protecting Americans. And they will continue to get that over the next four years of my presidency.”
The Huffington Post provides some additional quotes from the pool report. However, you may notice that HuffPo left out Obama’s “if four Americans get killed, it’s not optimal” line:
The President is campaigning hard!
And they are attacking Mitt Romney?