On Friday at the White House, President Obama lashed out at ABC News reporter Jonathan Karl and Fox News’ Ed Henry, explaining that he was self-critical enough that he did not need to hear critical questions from the two of them. “It’s not that I don’t engage in a lot of self-reflection here,” he said in response to a question from Karl. “I promise I beat myself up even worse than you or Ed Henry does, on any given day, but I’ve also got to wake up in the morning and make sure that I do better the next day.”
Obama’s relationships with the press corps have been on the downslope for months. White House press secretary Jay Carney has engaged repeatedly in battles with Karl over issues ranging from failures of the Obamacare rollout to Benghazi; he has ignored Ed Henry to the point where Henry walked out of a White House press briefing.
President Obama has also repeatedly attempted to portray himself as self-critical, stating repeatedly that he wanted to get outside the Washington, D.C. bubble and that the White House had made him a humbler person.