Yesterday afternoon I was performing my weekly ritual of fast forwarding through the recorded Sunday talk shows and cherry picking the interesting stuff. But I did not get very far. At the beginning of Face the Nation, CBS’ Bill Plant blandly asked President Obama, “When did you first learn Hillary Clinton used an e-mail system outside the US government for official business while she was secretary of state?”   Before the president could respond, I turned to my dear wife and exclaimed, “Here it comes! Here it comes.” I knew exactly what the President was going to say before his lips started moving. And then out it popped, “The same time everyone else learned about it, through news reports.”

Seriously? Seriously!  No one on your staff gave you a heads up? No memo indicating something to the effect, “Mr. President there is a story that is going to break on tonight’s news and I think it would be good if we could brief you before this explodes.” I’m trying to envision how things work at the White House. The President sits in the oval office in front of a bank of hi-def TVs watching the cable news broadcasts. When something of interest pops up he phones Chief of Staff Denis McDonough, “Hey Denis, you’re not gonna believe what just broke on CNN. Can you look into this for me?”

If I were president when this story surfaced, here is a short list questions I would expect my Chief of Staff to answer:

1. Which knucklehead in my administration knew about this and or authorized it?
2. Does that knucklehead still work for this administration?
3. Why didn’t anyone notice that every frig’n email to and from Hillary was addressed @clintonemail.com and not @state.gov?
4. Is the person who should have noticed still working for this administration?
5. Why didn’t I notice that every frig’n email to and from Hillary was addressed @clintonemail.com and not @state.gov?
6. Given the NSA is monitoring everyone’s e-mail, did anyone there notice that Clinton was exclusively using a personal e-mail account?
   1. If the answer to the above question is NO, then is there anyone in my administration monitoring our systems to know if sensitive confidential and classified information is being distributed to non-secure personal systems?
      1. If the answer to the above is NO…, uh…, urh… OMG!!!
7. Given the NSA is monitoring everyone’s e-mail, can we just get the missing e-mails directly from them?
8. Did anyone bother to investigate further when it was discovered in 2013 that Romanian hacker ‘Guccifer’ had gained access to Clinton’s private e-mails?
9. Heck, did anyone here even know her e-mails were compromised in 2013?
10. Can we arrange for ‘Guccifer’ to work for the NSA?  I think they are looking for folks with that skill set.
11. Which of my e-mails are going to get released and embarrass the crap out of me?

But what really derailed this Sunday routine was when Bill Plant asked the President to square this episode with the oft-repeated claim that this is the most open administration in history.   The presidents assertion “Its true” rang hollow.  With all due respect Mr. President, just say’n it doesn’t make it so.