But on CBS' Face The Nation, host Bob Scheiffer says he had a hard time believing that, and asked if the president was so upset upon that the federal agency responsible for collecting taxes was targeting right-wing groups, why did he wait three days to say so last week?
"Because we waited for all the facts," Pfeiffer replied.
Schieffer then turned on young spokesman, questioning why the White House would send out representatives on television shows who perhaps didn't know everything was going on, like Susan Rice, the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations whose appearances that the Benghazi attack was due to anger at an anti-Islamic video was inaccurate (and spurned the conservative cause that is Benghazi).
"That was just a P.R. plan to send out somebody who didn't know anything about what had happened. Why did you do that?, an uncharacteristically aggressive Schieffer asked. "I mean this as due respect out to you, but why are you out here today? Why isn't the White House chief-of-staff here to tell us what happened?"
Meanwhile, Congressional Republicans were ready for bear, even if, when it comes to Benghazi, they seemed to be backing off some of their claims about what the White House is guilty of there.
Texas Senator John Cornyn said that whenever the Obama White House is "caught doing something they shouldn't be doing is 'I didn't know about.' And It causes me to wonder if they believe willful ignorance is a defense, when it's your job to know." Cornyn says the genesis in two of these scandals is "intimidation that the administration is using against some of its critics. You see that in the AP story, in the IRS story."
That intimidation factor, promulgated in Friday's Wall Street Journal by columnist Kim Strassel, was seconded by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell on NBC'S Meet The Press.
"We're talking about an attitude that government knows best. The Nanny State is hear telling all of us what to do, and if we start criticizing, you get targeted, " McConnell said.
On Fox News Sunday, Paul Ryan called the IRS story "rotten to the core."
"This is arrogance. This is big government cronyism. And this is not what hard-working taxpayers deserve," said the House Budget chairman and 2012 GOP vice presidential nominee.
But when asked about Benghazi, Ryan admitted that he did not know if the Obama administration engaged in a “cover-up” of the Benghazi attacks. "I don't know the answer to that question, so I'm not even going to speculate, but that's what good oversight does."
On MTP, McConnell also backed away from saying that the White House made up the story about the YouTube video. "The talking points clearly were not accurate. I think getting to the bottom of this is an important investigation."
Perhaps the best exchange of the whole morning occurred during the panel discussion on Fox News Sunday, when Karl Rove interrupted Fox's newest member, former liberal Democratic Congressman Dennis Kucinich.
Kucinich blasted groups like Rove's American Crossroads, which are considered 501(c)(4) non-profits, meaning that mostly do "social welfare" work and thus can qualify as being tax-exempt. "They're called social welfare, but they're political organizations. The question is does the IRS have the ability anymore to audit these organizations. That's a problem."
When asked if these different issues will prompt more Americans to view government as being the problem and not the solution, Kucinich described the political situation, saying that there are some who can "only see the wrongs of the president from the other party. See below:
KUCINICH: Well, the first problem here, as it was said, there's some who can only see the wrongs of the president and the other party. I mean, we still haven't had President Bush, for example, account for why he took us into war in Iraq, and all the dead soldiers as a result, and the dead Iraqis.
ROVE: Oh, please.
KUCINICH: No, really ...
ROVE: Silverman-Robb commission looked into that ...
KUCINICH: Come on, listen.
ROVE: ... (inaudible) by a bipartisan commission.
KUCINICH: We went to war ...
ROVE: nbsp; And stop — just stop defending ...
KUCINICH: Where were the weapons of mass destruction?
ROVE: Stop defending — stop defending Obama and blaming Bush.
KUCINICH: I hope President Obama accountable ...
ROVE: That's gotten really, really and really tiresome.
KUCINICH: And I hope President Bush accountable.
You can't just attack President Obama and not look at what President Bush did.
ROVE: Silverman — again, Silverman — Robb commission looked into it from top to bottom. Move on.
KUCINICH: You know what?
WALLACE: All right. Move on in any case.
