Axelrod: 'No Inconsistency' From the White House on Libya

(Photo: NBC News)

Senior Obama campaign adviser David Axelrod said Sunday on "Meet the Press" that there has been "no inconsistency" from the White House regarding the September 11 attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi.

After a discussion of Iran, host David Gregory explained that "the issue has been...inconsistency from the administration with regard to how they described this."  He then played a clip of Republican vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan saying the administration's response has been "misleading," before Axelrod denied it all.

Shaking his head during the remarks, Axelrod said it's "nonsense" that their response has been inconsistent.  After saying Republicans are the ones playing politics with the attack, he continued:

There's an investigation ongoing with the intelligence community-- the FBI is on the ground.  We have reported, the administration has reported, everything that we've been told, and we've shared it in real time.  The fact is it's a complicated situation, we're thoroughly looking at what happened there, and reporting to the American people on it.

There's been no inconsistency, there's merely been reports on the data and the intelligence that we've been given.  And the intelligence community has been clear on this.  They have been doing the best they can, giving us the intelligence they have, we've been sharing the information, and we'll continue to do so.

While the "we distributed the information as we became aware of it" line may have worked several weeks ago, officials have now confirmed that the White House knew within 24 hours that the attack was not a spontaneous mob reacting to the trailer of an anti-Islam movie.

National Review notes that the administration's new push to claim they have been calling it a terrorist attack since September 12 actually just represents yet another "new narrative" in the administration's ever-changing account of what really happened in Libya.

Here is video of the interview, via NBC News (Libya discussion begins around 1:40):

(H/T: WeaselZippers)