The GOP cut this clip earlier, now I’m seeing people tweet it as proof that Carney and Obama can’t get their story straight on who’s to blame for the cynical “Fireman First” decision that canceled White House tours over sequestration. O said that decision wasn’t up to the White House; Carney says it was. Aha! But wait. Unless I’m misunderstanding, all Carney’s saying is that the Secret Service forced the White House’s hand. They decided they couldn’t afford to staff the building for tours until the budget cuts are lifted; the White House then had no choice but to cancel the tours due to lack of security. They’re both blaming the Secret Service ultimately. O, because of his severe allergies to any responsibility for bad developments, is just being a little more forceful about it.

The question isn’t whether he and Carney are contradicting each other, it’s whether the nonsense about the Secret Service being forced by cuts to cancel the tours is true. A former agent tells Breitbart.com that it isn’t:

Bongino, who served 12 years in the Secret Service including five years working directly at the White House before leaving to run as a Republican for U.S. Senate in Maryland, said Obama is lying because the Secret Service does not make such decisions.

“The Secret Service does not make political decisions,” Bongino said. “The Secret Service makes security decisions. His statement that it was a Secret Service decision internal budget decision–and keep in mind, I’m not speaking for the Secret Service, I’m speaking from experience of being with them. All he’d have to do is cancel one or two of his political trips and his Martha’s Vineyard vacation, which two years ago I was on and helped coordinate, he would save that money times ten. There was just no way this was a sound decision. To insinuate this is the first administration where the White House social office and the Executive Office of the President had no role in cancelling public tours at the White House, that he was the first president who was left out of the decision, is absolute nonsense.”…

Bongino said the Secret Service is not correcting Obama because the agency has “a great, elite group of guys and they’re always going to take it on the chin.”

Elsewhere in Secret Service news, agents will presumably accompany “observant Catholic” Joe Biden to Rome at great public expense for the new pope’s installation. Note to Francis: Ask Joe his thoughts on whether life begins at conception. That’ll get the conversation rolling.