Via the Blaze, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a reporter take a tone with a government functionary at a press conference quite like this. And it’s not the first time he’s done it, either. How does this guy not have his own cable news show already? Or better yet, an assignment as a White House beat reporter? “Yeah, first question. How much longer are we going to have to sit through your party’s crap about taxing our way out of this deficit mess?”

Here’s Erdogan’s statement about Israel being a “terrorist state,” which Nuland never quite gets around to condemning. I’m surprised he’d antagonize the U.S. by going full metal demagogue over Gaza right now. I know he’s done it before but at the moment he’s trying to get Obama to be more active in Syria, starting perhaps with installing Patriot missiles along the Turkish border to create a de facto no fly zone for Syrian rebels. Tossing rhetorical grenades into the mix while the White House is working on a ceasefire won’t help his cause. I assume he simply couldn’t resist the temptation to grandstand both for domestic benefit (some attendees at the Islamic conference where he spoke today burst into applause at the Israel line) and to goose his regional standing a bit. Until Morsi came along, Erdogan was the biggest name in “westernized” Islamism and a sort of fulcrum between America/Israel and the Palestinians/Sunni nations. Now he’s a lesser character as the U.S. tries to work with the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt to rein in Hamas. Bleating about Israel being a terrorist state is his way of reinserting himself into this drama.