Tapper Grills WH Official on ISIS: Why Was There ‘No Serious Action’ for Months?

Jake Tapper grilled White House Deputy National Security Advisor Tony Blinken today over the perception that President Obama underestimated the threat of ISIS, citing in particular a quote in which Obama compared ISIS and other al-Qaeda groups to junior varsity teams wearing Lakers uniforms.

Tapper said that “for months and months” people had warned about the threat ISIS posed “with no action, no serious action, by the White House.” He asked, “Was the intelligence not there? Why is it only now that you’re acting?”

Blinken argued they’ve been “focused on this for well over a year,” and they had been working with Iraqis to deal with AQI and eventually ISIS before “the ISIS threat overtook the efforts that the Iraqis were making to deal with it.”

Tapper then asked, “Just how badly did President Obama underestimate the threat of ISIS?” Blinken defended Obama and said that there are groups out there, like ISIS, that are not focused on attacking the United States and so therefore are not as big a threat as core al-Qaeda would be.

Watch the segment below, via CNN:

[h/t Twitchy]
[image via screengrab]

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Follow Josh Feldman on Twitter: @feldmaniac

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