During their joint press conference this afternoon in Jerusalem, President Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu mocked NBC’s Chuck Todd
for asking too many questions.
Transcript via Mediate:
“I want to follow up a little bit on the peace process. You began
your term — first term, big fanfare — speaking to the Muslim world, the
decision to have a Middle East envoy early, you said you weren’t going
to let this slip to your second term. We’re in your second term with the
Middle East peace process. What went wrong? Why are we further away
from a two-state solution?” he asked.
“You want to talk more about this
tomorrow, but I’m curious, what do you believe went wrong? Did you push
Israel too hard? What do you wish you would have done differently?” Todd continued to ask.
And then he turned with a pair of questions for Netanyahu: “And, Mr. Prime Minister, I
want to help out my colleague over here with a follow-up he had, which
had to do with, do you accept the president’s understanding that Iran is
a year away when it comes to nuclear weapons?”
“And another
question I had for you,” before Obama cut him off to give him a good
ribbing.
“Chuck, how many you got?” the president asked with a grin. “Do you
guys do this in the Israeli press? You say you have one question and
then you add like five? You see how the young lady from Channel One, she
had one question, she was very well behaved, Chuck?”
Laughing along, Todd said, “I thought I had four
questions. Passover starts in four days. I get four questions, right?”
Netanyahu then chimed in with his own zinger: “Look, this is not a kosher question, but, don’t hog it.”
After the exchange, Todd inserted
his final inquiry: “Why do you believe the Israeli people have not
embraced President Obama the same way they embraced our last two
presidents?”
“So you had to get a polling question in there right at the end,
huh?” Obama replied. “Chuck, I mean, you’re just incorrigible,” he joked
before launching into his answers.