Obama and Huffington Post Planted Question (Video)

Obama knew this was coming. The second question of his news conference was a plant.

When he called on a reporter from the Huffington Post, he prefaced the reporter's question by saying Iranians have been communicating with the world via the Internet.

The guy from the Huffington Post went on to ask a question that was directly from an Iranian in Iran.

Obviously, Obama knew about the question.
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Transcript

MR. OBAMA: Since we're on Iran, I know Niko Pitney (ph) is here from the Huffington Post.

QUESTION: Thank you, Mr. President.

MR. OBAMA: Niko (ph), I know that you and all across the Internet, we've been seeing a lot of reports coming directly out of Iran. I know that there may actually be questions from people in Iran who are communicating through the Internet. Do you have a question?

QUESTION: Yes, I did, but I wanted to use this opportunity to ask you a question directly from an Iranian. We solicited questions on tonight from people who are still courageous enough to be communicating online. And one of them wanted to ask you this: Under which conditions would you accept the election of Ahmadinejad? And if you do accept it without any significant changes in the conditions there, isn't that a betrayal of -- of what the demonstrators there are working to achieve?

MR. OBAMA: Well, look, we didn't have international observers on the ground. We can't say definitively what exactly happened at polling places throughout the country.

What we know is that a sizable percentage of the Iranian people themselves, spanning Iranian society, consider this election illegitimate. It's not an isolated instance, a little grumbling here or there. There is significant questions about the legitimacy of the election.

And so, ultimately, the most important thing for the Iranian government to consider is legitimacy in the eyes of its own people, not in the eyes of the United States.

And that's why I've been very clear, ultimately, this is up to the Iranian people to decide who their leadership is going to be and the structure of their government.

What we can do is to say, unequivocally, that there are sets of international norms and principles about violence, about dealing with the peaceful dissent, that -- that spans cultures, spans borders.

And what we've been seeing over the Internet and what we've been seeing in news reports violates those norms and violates those principles.

I think it is not too late for the Iranian government to recognize that -- that there is a peaceful path that will lead to stability and legitimacy and prosperity for the Iranian people. We hope they take it.

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Politico has some updates on this.

UPDATE: Deputy press secretary Bill Burton responds: "We did reach out to him prior to press conference to tell him that we had been paying attention to what he had been doing on Iran and there was a chance that he’d be called on. And, he ended up asking the toughest question that the President took on Iran. In the absence of an Iranian press corps in Washington, it was an innovative way to get a question directly from an Iranian."

UPDATE 2: Knoller, again via Twitter: "Huffington Post's Nico Pitney says the WH called him this morning and invited him to ask his Iran questions at the news conference."

It was clearly a plant. Anyone could see that.

I think Obama should have clarified immediately that the White House had "reached out" to Pitney.

The staged little dance was a mistake.

Video.