President Obama looking to shore up his base hosted a lunch with several members of the liberal media at the White House on Thursday.

From Yahoo! News

President Obama spoke to the nation on Tuesday, then to BP executives on Wednesday. Who’s next? Political pundits!

Obama held an off-the-record lunch Thursday at the White House with several prominent political writers and pundits: the Washington Post’s Eugene Robinson, the Wall Street Journal’s Jerry Seib, the New York Times’ Gail Collins and MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow. (Arianna Huffington was also invited, but according to her own White House reporter, she couldn’t attend because of a scheduling conflict.)

Yahoo! News confirmed the journalist guest list and also learned that the meeting was staffed by a trio of top White House officials: David Axelrod, Rahm Emanuel and Valerie Jarrett.

Presumably, the Gulf crisis was a major topic of discussion, but little has leaked out so far about specifics of the hourlong lunch. Even though White House reporters noticed the group leaving — and tweeted about it! — attendees are sticking to the off-the-record ground rules and keeping quiet.

It’d be interesting to know what Obama may have thought of Maddow’s fake presidential address Wednesday night, in which the MSNBC host laid out what she thinks he should have said on Tuesday. But when reached by Yahoo! News, Maddow declined to comment.

Reached by phone, Robinson and Seib also declined to comment. Collins did not immediately reply to a request for comment.

Obama doesn’t often break bread with influential political columnists and cable news hosts, but has done so a few times in the past.

Obama didn’t exactly wow the liberal media on Tuesday night with his Gulf Oil speech ( read my earlier post about the Olbermann/Maddow reaction) and this meeting looks like an attempt to plug the hole that is forming as they run for the exits.

Share This

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

About the author