There's a second flat-out lie, the bit where Obama claimed his executive order would have protected Snowden. There's also the part where Obama tells him that t

There's a second flat-out lie, the bit where Obama claimed his executive order would have protected Snowden. There's also the part where Obama tells him that the "avenues available for somebody whose conscience was stirred and thought that they needed to question government actions[0]" are talking about it with his superiors. Problem with that is, as soon as Obama accepts that these government actions were in fact wrong or unlawful (and at least a couple of them very plainly are), he also has to accept that actions should be taken to address this situation. Then either Obama is very very stupid because he believes that talking to superiors about abuses of this scale would be met with anything but utter silence, or he is in fact playing dumb and lying through his teeth because he doesn't actually want any action to be taken. [0] the belittling, condescending tone of this phrase makes me throw up a little. But that's been the US government's attitude during this whole episode "tut tut, don't you worry your pretty little heads about this". More like an elitist aristocracy.