Media Relentlessly Pushes Narrative That Saudi King ‘Snubbed’ Obama’s Iran Summit

During Monday’s White House daily briefing, Press Secretary Josh Earnest was peppered with questions about the recently-announced absence of Saudi Arabian head of state King Salman’s absence at this week’s Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) summit at the White House and Camp David, including this early exchange with Reuters’ Julia Edwards that well encapsulates the contours of this narrative:

“I think we’ve identified the word of the day in the briefing today. No, fair enough, that was probably the word of the day in the briefing based on the press coverage before we even started going through these questions.”

What he’s referring to is a Sunday announcement by the Saudi Arabian government that the king would not be attending the summit, after the White House said, Friday, that King Salman would be attending. The White House and the Saudi government insist it is not a snub, but pretty much everyone in the media knows better, including supposedly in-the-tank MSNBC, whose Andrea Mitchell reported the story shortly before Monday’s briefing, with the help of the Associated Press‘ Julie Pace…READ MORE

By: Tommy Christopher

Tommy Christopher is The Daily Banter's White House Correspondent and Political Analyst. He's been a political reporter and liberal commentator since 2007, and has covered the White House since the beginning of the Obama administration, first for PoliticsDaily, and then for Mediaite. Christopher is a frequent guest on a variety of television, radio, and online programs, and was the villain in the documentaries The Audacity of Democracy and Hating Breitbart. He's also That Guy Who Live-Tweeted His Own Heart Attack, and the only person to have ever received public apologies from both Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck.