CNN: During Bin Laden Attack, Obama Abandoned Situation Room to Play Hours of Cards With Reggie Love

While the famous photo op depicts President Obama hunkered down in the Situation Room while SEAL Team 6 pulled off its dazzling assault on Bin Laden's Abbottabad compound, the reality was far more galling.

Via CNN, we discover that a bored President Obama and his "body man" Reggie Love were deeply engaged in hours of card-playing during the attack.

A famous photo shows President Barack Obama hunkered down in the Situation Room in May 2011 with his national security team as U.S. Navy SEALS carried out the raid that killed Osama bin Laden.

But his former body man Reggie Love said in an interview posted online Wednesday that Obama also played cards to distract himself during the day-long ordeal...

...In the July 18 interview, which took place during a lunch hosted by UCLA's Luskin School of Public Affairs, Love talked about life with the president, including the historic moment more than two years ago when bin Laden was killed.

Describing it as a "very long day," Love said most people were in the Situation Room but Obama came to the private dining room to play cards with Love, White House photographer Pete Souza and staffer Marvin Nicholson.

"[President Obama] was like, 'I'm not, I'm not going to be down there, I can't watch this entire thing'," Love said. "We must have played 15 hands-15 games of Spades."

The revealing video appears to have been sufficiently damning that it has since been removed by the user who uploaded it.

Which begs the question: since the media still will not ask what the president was doing for eight hours while the Benghazi attack raged, perhaps we could ask Reggie Love.

And: what the hell is a "body man"?


Hat tips: Weasel Zippers and Wanda.