President Obama in an interview with Diane Sawyer tonight downplayed the incident with Gov. Brewer-AZ on the tarmac yesterday. He said the media blew a small issue out of proportion.
"This is not a big deal," the president said in an interview with ABC's Diane Sawyer that will air on ABC World News Thursday night.
"It's always good publicity for a Republican if they're in an argument with me," said Obama.
While some could argue that is the case, Brewer came out shortly after the incident and said Obama was "thin-skinned" and his attitude surprised her.
"I was a bit taken aback by his stance and his attitude," the governor said. "I tried to listen and tried to be respectful to him."
When asked flat-out if he was tense during the meeting, Obama first attempted to laugh it off but, when pressed, responded with a firm "no."
Although some in the media are crediting Gov. Brewer with some kind of forethought to plan this for publicity, they are wrong. She can't even think of her next word. She was just reacting in a petty way about her book, which she didn't even write anyway. It wasn't about AZ. It wasn't about the President coming to visit and promote business. It was all about her. She lost it plain and simple, and now it’s all spin. She's a sorry excuse for a governor.
If you go to this site there is a link to click on the interview. I could not get it any other way.
http://ktar.com/...
4:40 PM PT: Info and link provided by jj32.
Mayor Scott Smith of Mesa, Ariz., declined to say exactly what he heard Obama and Brewer talk about during their now-infamous tiff next to Air Force One.
But the mayor said he was standing right next to the governor when the exchange took place and Obama didn’t seem to be in any kind of hurry to leave.
“There was no sense that he was running to or from anything,” Smith told TPM. In fact, he said, the president stayed and had a pleasant conversation with Smith, who’s a Republican, and Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton, a Democrat.
It was “just the four of us,” Smith said. “Mayor Stanton and I had a decent talk with him.”
The portrayal of a calm, friendly president seems to at least partly contradict what Brewer has said about the encounter in numerous interviews since Wednesday afternoon. She described the president as “tense” and said he walked away from her while she was in mid-sentence. She told a Phoenix television station she felt “a little bit threatened” by the encounter.
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/...
Also I am listening to the interview and Pres. Obama laughs and says he is usually being accused of being to relaxed and not tense enough.