UPDATE: Gov. Jan Brewer Reveals What Happened in the Photo of Her, President Obama in a ‘Heated Exchange’
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Arizona Governor Jan Brewer greeted Obama at the airport on Wednesday.
Obama used the opportunity to lash out at her.
From the Arizona Republic:
President Barack Obama arrived at Phoenix-Mesa Gateway Airport and was greeted by Gov. Jan Brewer, among other dignitaries and local mayors. The two spoke intensely for a few minutes. At one point, she pointed her finger at him. At another, they were talking over each other.
Obama appeared to walk away from Brewer while they were still talking.
"He was a little disturbed about my book, 'Scorpions for Breakfast,' " Brewer told a pool reporter who is a member of the traveling White House press corps shortly after her encounter with Obama. "I said to him that I have all the respect in the world for the office of the president. The book is what the book is. I asked him if he read the book. He said he read the excerpt."
Asked what aspect of the book disturbed him, Brewer said: "That he didn't feel that I had treated him cordially. I said I was sorry he felt that way, but I didn't get my sentence finished. Anyway, we're glad he's here."
Brewer, a Republican, had given Obama a letter about immigration and invited him back to Arizona. Her office declined to release a copy, saying it was a personal, hand-written letter and not a public record. She later released a statement saying she and the president had discussed "this state's economic turnaround."
A White House official said Obama told Brewer that he wants to help Arizona's economy expand and that he'd be happy to meet with her, but that he felt Brewer gave an inaccurate portrayal of her previous Oval Office meeting in her 2011 book.
The official said their last meeting, in June 2010, was a cordial discussion in the Oval Office. At the time, Brewer also described the conversation as cordial, but in the book, she calls the president "patronizing" and said "he lectured me."
Following Wednesday's event, Brewer spokesman Matthew Benson said the governor "was somewhat taken aback by the president's tone" during the encounter.
From the Associated Press:
Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer came to greet President Obama upon his arrival outside Phoenix Wednesday. What she got was a critique. Of her book.
The two leaders could be seen engaged in an intense conversation at the base of Air Force One's steps. Both could be seen smiling, but speaking at the same time.
Asked moments later what the conversation was about, Brewer, a Republican, said, "He was a little disturbed about my book."
Brewer recently published a book, "Scorpions for Breakfast," something of a memoir of her years growing up, and defends her signing of Arizona's controversial law cracking down on illegal immigrants, which Obama opposes.
Obama was objecting to Brewer's description of a meeting he and Brewer had at the White House, where she described Obama as lecturing her. In an interview in November Brewer described two tense meetings. The first took place before his commencement address at Arizona State University. "He did blow me off at ASU," she said in the television interview in November.
She also described meeting the president at the White House in 2010 to talk about immigration. "I felt a little bit like I was being lectured to, and I was a little kid in a classroom, if you will, and he was this wise professor and I was this little kid, and this little kid knows what the problem is and I felt minimized to say the least."
Temper, temper, Obama. Show a little self-control.
This was not the time to engage in a hissy fit over Brewer's book.
Very unpresidential to say the least.
I don't blame Brewer for responding.
Obama threw the first punch.
Video.
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