Obama's interviews with local journalists don't go as planned A handful of the regional interviewers invited to the White House didn't make it easy on the president.

The “Live from the White House” series is usually President Barack Obama’s show. But not all of his interviews with anchors from regional TV stations this week worked out quite as planned.

The usual drill goes as follows: The president invites local interviewers — often journalists unaccustomed to the daily joust with spokesman Josh Earnest — to the White House. They get a tour and a wonky Roosevelt Room briefing from senior administration officials and a live shot from the North Lawn. And the president gets to answer some predictable questions on a topic of his choice, beamed straight to his target constituency.


But at least a couple of the five regional interviewers invited to the White House on Wednesday for a pep talk about the benefits of Obama’s Pacific free-trade agreement didn’t quite follow the pattern.

Take his interview with Estela Casas of KVIA, the ABC affiliate in El Paso, Texas. Her package gave Obama only 25 seconds worth of boilerplate, in which he asserted that the pact would ensure the United States is “able to compete on a world stage and that we are able to sell our products made in America to the world.”

The segment then cuts off the president midthought on how the Trans-Pacific Partnership has “a lot of safeguards that weren’t there before” to give nearly equal time to an opponent, Rafael Navar, national political director of the Communications Workers of America. With the White House in the background, Navar describes how previous trade agreements hurt El Paso’s economy and concludes: “This trade deal is really detrimental to working people.”

The most important member of Obama’s target audience in El Paso, Democratic Rep. Beto O’Rourke, says in the package’s final segment that he’ll keep mulling over it until it’s time to vote.

KVIA did run the full interview online, so it’s possible to see how Obama’s unadulterated pitch was crafted, as did Seattle’s KING 5 News, where Obama is trying to win Democratic Rep. Derek Kilmer’s support.

“Other than maybe the CEO of Boeing, I don’t know anybody who’s done more to sell Boeing planes than me in this administration,” Obama said, insisting to manufacturing workers that their jobs won’t move abroad. He later added, “If you’re a winemaker, if you’re a farmer, if you are part of an IT company in Washington, this is going to open up markets for you.”

In Dallas-Fort Worth, there was a more traditional package, with clips of two small business owners on opposite sides of the debate — as well as a local union rep — teeing up the president.

San Diego’s CBS 8 ran just a preview of its anchor’s interview on Wednesday with a promise to show the rest on Friday. A local AFL-CIO official predicted the president would have little effect on the area’s voters, or on Democratic Reps. Scott Peters and Susan Davis.

“It just illustrates how far removed he is from our local situation and our conversation with our local representatives,” said Richard Barrera, secretary-treasurer of the San Diego and Imperial Counties Labor Council, in a phone interview.

Obama isn’t just trying to make the substantive case for the TPP. He’s also trying to show in advance that he’ll make good on a commitment to help Democrats who support a top priority of his term’s fourth quarter when the fast-track authority he wants to seal the deal comes up for a vote as early as next week in the House.

“The president has made very clear, both in public and in private, a willingness to stand with Democrats who stand with him on the trade argument,” Earnest told the regular White House press corps on Wednesday. “They can count on the support of President Barack Obama in a Democratic primary if they need it.”

Indeed, Obama went out of his way to give a shout-out to Rep. Ami Bera, a Sacramento-area Democrat who is already taking a beating from unions over his planned yes vote. In response to a question about California’s drought, Obama called Bera “terrific on these issues” and added that both men are “progressive Democrats” working to “expand opportunity.” However, if Obama committed to campaigning for Bera when the local NBC anchor Edie Lambert asked if he’d show up to the district, the clip is on the cutting-room floor.

Bera will likely be vulnerable beyond the primary. He beat his Republican challenger by less than 1 percent in November. Labor unions around the country have threatened to sit out campaigns for pro-trade Democrats, if not actively work against them.

“Local members of Congress know for certain who’s going be here and who shares their values,” said Barrera, the San Diego union official. As for Obama’s promise of electoral support for Democrats who vote for the trade deal, Barrera said: “Nobody can evaluate what it’s going to mean to a lame duck president who’s got some pretty heavy-duty issues to deal with.”