In a stunning reversal of his past statements diminishing the Islamic State terrorist network’s threat level, President Barack Obama conceded to NBC News on Sunday that ISIS is “not a JV team.”
“So they are not a JV [junior varsity] team?” asked NBC News’ Chuck Todd.
“They are not a JV team,” Obama admitted. “But keep in mind that we anticipated some of these problems in a speech I gave at West Point several months ago.”
Obama’s original diminution of ISIS came during a New Yorker interview in January with David Remnick. Remnick called Obama’s controversial comments an “uncharacteristically flip analogy.”
On Sunday, Obama attempted to backpedal his prior statement in the wake of ISIS’s videotaped beheadings of two American journalists. Todd asked whether Obama’s flippant dismissal of ISIS as a JV team was based on “bad intelligence or your misjudgment.”
Obama said, “I wasn’t specifically referring to ISIL [ISIS],” a claim the Washington Post Fact Checker gave four Pinocchios for being misleading.”The interviewer was certainly asking about ISIS when Obama answered with his “JV” remarks,” concluded the Washington Post.
Obama’s approval rating has continued to plunge in the wake of his admission that he did not “have a strategy” for combating ISIS in the wake of the terrorist organization’s beheading of two Americans. According to Gallup, just 38% of Americans now support Obama.
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