Rumsfeld said that the administration’s motives don't jibe with extremists. | John Shinkle/POLITICO Rumsfeld: W.H. 'naive' about protests

Donald Rumsfeld accused the Obama administration Tuesday of naïveté for contending that recent attacks on U.S. posts in the Middle East were the product of a once-obscure film.

“The idea that they can contend that the anger and hostility that we see from Islamists in these 20-plus locations around the world is a result of a film that nobody has seen, I think, is naïve if they believe it, and misleading if they don’t,” the former defense secretary said on “Fox & Friends.”


Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, on Sunday characterized the Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya — in which U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans were killed — as having been “a spontaneous reaction” to the storming of the U.S. Embassy in Cairo, Egypt, which were supposedly ignited by an anti-Islam film produced in the United States.

Rumsfeld said Tuesday that the administration’s motives do not jibe with extremists who “want to achieve their goals of imposing their views on the rest of the world.”

“I think it’s hope — I think [Obama and his advisers] are hopeful they can persuade the American people that’s the case,” he said. “But the fact of the matter is, it took place on the anniversary of Sept. 11, the attack on the United States 11 years ago.”

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Donald Rumsfeld

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