Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin criticized President Barack Obama Wednesday evening over his handling of the Veteran Affairs hospital scandal, calling his response “lazy.”
“Nothing’s going to happen while Obama is in charge of our military and the VA and our federal government in general,” Palin said during an appearance on Fox News. “Government’s going to continue to grow under Barack Obama, and this big, ineffective, inefficient government that he has grown will just create and perpetuate the problem.”
The politician turned pundit lobbed the “lazy” attack after host Sean Hannity asked her “the president does not hold people accountable.”
“[W]hen you hold someone accountable, it takes some energy and resource, and Barack Obama is lazy,” she responded. “In fact, he warned us that he was lazy and he attributed that to having been brought up in Hawaii. It’s his words, not mine.”
Palin was presumably referencing a 2011 interview Obama gave to Barbara Walters in which Walters asked him what trait he most deplored in himself.
“Laziness,” the president responded. “You’re lazy?” Walters asked. “You know, it’s interesting,” he replied. “There is a deep down, underneath all of the work I do, I think there’s a laziness in me. I mean, it’s probably from growing up in Hawaii. It’s sunny outside, sitting on the beach.”
The president publicly addressed the VA scandal in remarks Wednesday, saying the White House would not wait for the VA’s internal investigation and that he has instead assigned a top aide to travel to Phoenix, Ariz., to further investigate VA hospitals. “When I hear any allegations of misconduct, any misconduct, whether it’s allegations of VA staff covering up long wait times or cooking the books, I will not stand for it,” he said after a meeting with VA Secretary Eric Shinseki in the Oval Office Wednesday morning. Palin is not the first to accuse Obama of laziness. Mitt Romney campaign surrogate, former New Hampshire Gov. John Sununu, made similar accusations during the 2012 campaign. Speaking about Obama’s performance in a debate with Romney, Sununu claimed “revealed his incompetence, how lazy and detached he is, how he has absolutely no idea how serious the economic problems of the country are, and how he has failed to even begin to address them,” during an appearance on Andrea Mitchell Reports on msnbc.
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