Video Of Obama’s “Jackass” Comment Removed By Politico, Saved By CNN

Politico has nabbed (not so fast! updates below) the video of President Obama’s now infamous (image saving?) “jackass” remark. It’s a fairly jolly scene! The journalist we heard hooting in the background yesterday, turns out to be John Harwood himself, who thinks the remark in hi-larious. However, any pretense that Obama’s remark was reasonably going to be kept on the down-low is done away with when it becomes clear the President is surrounded by cameras and already miked. His look of exasperation at the room’s response is nothing if not well-practiced.

UPDATE: And now Politico appears to have removed it. Because they feel it’s off-the-record? Can it really still be considered OTR now that it’s become such a public event? Yowzer. Even Mark Knoller doesn’t seem to think the interaction can reasonably be considered off-the-record anymore. Did Politico merely chicken out? Were they on the receiving end of a phone call from the higher-higher ups? It’s hard to imagine them removing such traffic bait for any other reason. We have an email into Politico and will update when we hear back.

UPDATE 2: Politico tells us “We just felt upon reflection that it was more respectful to a fellow news-gathering operation to take it down.”

UPDATE 3: YouTube saves the day! Apparently CNN has no OTR issues with airing the video Politico scooped. You can watch it above. Original Politico link below.

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