It’s the shocking disclosure from a White House insider which shocks absolutely nobody:
How important is Jarrett inside the Obama White House? Brill was able to interview the president about the struggles of Obamacare and reports that he concluded: “At this point, I am not so interested in Monday morning quarterbacking the past.” That must be one reason Jarrett is still at his side, in the same outsize role she’s held since both arrived in D.C. in January 2009. How outsize? Brill told the president that five of the highest-ranking Obama officials had told him that “as a practical matter . . . Jarrett was the real chief of staff on any issues that she wanted to weigh in on, and she jealously protected that position by making sure the president never gave anyone else too much power.” When Brill asked the president about these aides’ assessment of Jarrett, Obama “declined comment,” Brill wrote in his book. That, in and of itself, is an answer.
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After Obama’s inexplicable failure to note the rise of the Islamic State and to deal with problems involving veterans’ health care, I wrote last year that “Jarrett appears to exercise such extraordinary influence that in some quarters on Capitol Hill she is known as ‘Rasputin,’ a reference to the mystical monk who held sway over Russia’s Czar Nicholas as he increasingly lost touch with reality during World War I.” After my column appeared, I ran into a top aide to a Democratic senator. “You don’t know the half of it,” he told me. “[Jarrett is] not only Rasputin, she’s the Berlin Wall preventing us from even getting messages to the president.”
That kind of isolated thinking might just be to blame for Obama’s “mysterious” absence from Paris yesterday.
Or it was just an intentional snub from a President who doesn’t have much use for evil colonial European powers.
Or both.
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