As the controversy surrounding the recent revelation of the deceptive campaign run by the White House to market the Iran nuclear deal continues to swirl, Republicans in the House of Representatives are demanding that top White House adviser Ben Rhodes testify next week at a hearing of the House Oversight Committee. Rhodes, who serves as President Barack Obama's deputy national security adviser for strategic communications, was quoted in a recent New York Times Magazine profile piece as saying that the Obama administration had created a media "echo chamber" to promote the Iran deal, with reporters "saying things that validated what we had given them to say." "In the absence of rational discourse, we are going to discourse the [expletive] out of this," Rhodes said. "We had test drives to know who was going to be able to carry our message effectively, and how to use outside groups like Ploughshares, the Iran Project and whomever else. So we knew the tactics that worked." Regarding opponents of the Iran deal, Rhodes said, "We drove them crazy." On Tuesday, the House Oversight Committee will hold a hearing titled "White House narratives on the Iran nuclear deal." Rhodes has yet to respond to the demand that he testify at the hearing.
