Former AP Bureau Chief: Obama Has Raised a 'Jihad' Against the Press

The Obama administration is currently embroiled in three major scandals: Benghazi, the IRS targeting conservatives, and the Department of Justice spying on and seizing the phone records of reporters.

In the mainstream media, though, there seems to have been a wall erected between the president, and the acts of his administration.

But on Thursday morning's episode of MSNBC's "Morning Joe," former Associated Press Washington Bureau Chief and current National Journal editor Ron Fournier went so far as to say President Obama has "raised a jihad against the press," making it much more difficult to gather information from well-placed sources.

The result, Fournier argued, could be more "dumb wars" (for those who don't recall, Newsbusters' Noel Sheppard reminds that President Obama referred to the war in Iraq as a "dumb war" in October of 2002).

Here is the full context of Fournier's remarks:

You can't make journalism a conspiracy.  That is -- it is chilling and it's already having...an effect on our ability to be able to report on national security issues. It was already tough enough, and the press, as you know John, has gotten a lot of criticism for laying down on Iraq, for not exposing earlier the lies and the deceptions on Iraq. That wasn’t because the press corps is conservative. Actually, as you know, generally the opposite is true.

It's not that the press corps is for war. The problem there was it's awfully hard to do this kind of reporting. It's a tight-knit community. The irony here is that President Obama, by raising a jihad against the press, has now made it more likely that we’re going to have what he called 'dumb wars.' It’s going to be harder for us to ferret out dumb wars because of this.

(H/T: Mediaite)