White House Clarifies Obama Comments on Paris Kosher Deli Terror

t has not been a great couple of days for President Obama—at least rhetorically.

Obama administration officials hurriedly walked back responses Tuesday to questions about the president's choice of words describing last month's attack on a kosher deli in Paris that killed four.

In an interview with Vox released Monday, Obama was quoted as referring to the attackers as "violent, vicious zealots who behead people or randomly shoot a bunch of folks in a deli in Paris."

It was the word "randomly" that touched a tripwire—first with the conservative media. Tuesday, it led to Jonathan Karl of ABC News asking Press Secretary Josh Earnest about Obama's choice of words: Did he mean to say that those shot weren't targeted because of their Jewish faith?

Earnest, in a back-and-forth with Karl, said that Obama was referring to the randomness of the victims being in the building at the time. But pressed then as to whether those victims would have been killed had they not been in a kosher deli, Earnest replied, "There were people other than just Jews who were in that deli."

Not long after, across town at the State Department, spokesperson Jen Psaki made a similar point in response to the question. Both replies suggested the White House no longer viewed the attack as motivated by anti-Semitism. And both replies came amid rising tensions between Obama's aides and congressional Republicans over the invitation of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to speak at a joint session of Congress in March—a fight that has turned into a political struggle for the hearts and minds of American Jewish voters.

It didn't take long for both Earnest and Psaki to clarify their remarks via Twitter. "Our view has not changed," Earnest tweeted. "Terror attack at Paris Kosher market was motivated by anti-Semitism. POTUS didn't intend to suggest otherwise."

Tweeted Psaki: "We have always been clear that the attack on the kosher grocery store was an anti-Semitic attack that took the lives of innocent people."

The White House's misfire came just days after Obama was roundly criticized by Republicans for his remarks at the National Prayer Breakfast, where, in a discussion about radical Islamic terrorism, he brought up the Crusades and the Spanish Inquisition as historical examples of violence that was done in the name of Christianity.

And that came amid a continuing debate over the president's refusal to label terror groups such as Islamic State and al-Qaida as motivated by religious ideology.