Former New Hampshire Gov. John Sununu Tuesday called President Barack Obama "lazy and detached from his job," as Republicans continued to criticize the president's response to anti-American violence in the Middle East and his handling of foreign policy.
"He's absolutely lazy and detached from his job," Sununu told Fox News' Sean Hannity Tuesday evening, referring to reports Obama sometimes "skims" his daily national security briefings instead of getting a face-to-face summary from aides every morning.
"I was in the White House with George Herbert Walker Bush. He took that brief every day," said Sununu who served as White House chief of staff under the first President Bush. "George W. Bush took it every day, and I believe Bill Clinton took it every day."
But Sununu said Obama "thinks he's smarter than those guys and he doesn't have to engage in the discussion.
"That's the most important half-hour of the day for a president who has to protect the security of the United States," he added.
Sununu, one of Mitt Romney's strongest and most vocal supporters, also accused the president of not being prepared on the anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks for a possible outbreak of violence in the Middle East. He suggested the death of U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens in Libya and three other Americans could have been avoided if stronger security measures had been in place in Benghazi, a well-known al-Qaida recruitment area.
He also claimed the Obama administration knew ahead of time there would be trouble on the 9/11 anniversary and is now blaming the violence on an anti-Muslim Internet video in an attempt to cover up the security failure.
"This a president who is trying to hide the fact that we knew ahead of time that September 11th was going to be a horrible day, that poor ambassador Stevens understood he was in serious trouble there, that we left him under protected, and that the assault was not a demonstration [against the video], Sununu said.
He called the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi "a well-planned military movement . . . deliberately designed to be a September 11th assault.
"It had nothing to do with the video. And shame on this President for going back, trying to hide the facts by saying it over and over again in New York," Sununu said, referring to the president's speech at the United Nations on Tuesday.
Democratic political strategist Joe Trippi, who appeared on the Hannity program as well, challenged Sununu's claim, saying, "We don't know any of that."
"We may know that when all the facts are in and it's all investigated, and it will be. But at the time this happened, that is not what we knew," Trippi insisted, defending the administration's early claim the attack did not appear to be a terrorist event tied to 9/11.
But Sununu said it still boils down to the president not being prepared at "a critical time" when he should have been.
"This is a part of the world where a transition was taking place, and we should have been there leading" he said, referring to the Arab Spring.
"We should have been there putting pressure on the Russians not to be supplying [Syrian President Bashar] Assad. We should have been there providing assistance to those that were fighting in the right direction rather than just letting the vacuum be filled by the folks that we don't want running these countries. We were not doing that," Sununu added.
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