For the first time since four American diplomats were killed during violent protests at the U.S. consulate in Libya, the White House spokesman acknowledged that the attacks were an act of terrorism. 

During a gaggle with reporters on Air Force One, Press Secretary Jay Carney called the attacks “terrorism” in the sense that they fit the definition of such an act.

“It is, I think, self-evident that what happened in Benghazi was a terrorist attack. Our embassy was attacked violently and the result was four deaths of American officials – that's self-evident," Carney said to reporters traveling en route to Florida, where the president participated in a forum hosted by the Spanish-language network Univision.

The mention of “terrorism” – first made Wednesday by National Counterterrorism Center Director Matthew Olsen (an Obama administration official) during Capitol Hill testimony -- was a marked shift in tone for Carney, who, until Thursday, had used the less-charged word, “extremists” to refer to the perpetrators.

Related: White House says Libya consulate siege that killed four was terrorist attack

“There has certainly been precedent in the past where bad actors – extremists who are heavily armed in different countries, in different regions of the world, have taken advantage of and exploited situations that have developed in order to either attack Westerners or Western assets or American or American assets,” Carney said at Wednesday’s press briefing, which took place about 45 minutes after Olsen called the attack terrorism.

But President Obama did not call the attack “terrorism” during the Univision forum, sticking to “extremism.”

“The natural protests that arose because of the outrage over the video were used as an excuse by extremists to see if they can also directly harm U.S. interests,” Obama said, declining to comment on whether or not the attacks had been premeditated.

He suggested, however, that if the attack had been planned, it would have been orchestrated by a smaller organization than al-Qaida, as Olsen suggested Wednesday. Olsen said the perpetrators were likely an offshoot of al-Qaida, similar to its North African branch, al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb.

“In Yemen, in Libya, in other of these places, increasingly in places like Syria, what you see is these elements that don't have the same capacity that a bin Laden or core al-Qaida had but can still cause a lot of damage,” Obama said.

MELBOURNE, Fla. – Hours after his opponents Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan did a Sunday morning TV show blitz, President Barack Obama criticized them for not offering more specifics on how they would keep revenue stable while not raising taxes on the wealthy.

“Governor Romney and his allies tell us that we can somehow lower our deficit by spending trillions on new tax breaks for the wealthy. Listen, you’ve got to do the math because when my opponents were asked about it today, they couldn’t. It was like two plus one equals five,” Obama told a crowd of more than 3,000 in a gymnasium at the Florida Institute of Technology here.

When asked during an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press” what tax loopholes he would eliminate, Romney got no more specific than telling host David Gregory, “high income taxpayers are going to have fewer deductions and exemptions.”

On ABC News’ “This Week,” Ryan said Romney and he would consult with Congress before deciding which loopholes to cut. “We want to do this with the consent of the elected representatives of the people and figure out what loopholes should stay or go,” he said.

Of their lack of specifics, Obama said, “That’s not bold leadership, that’s bad math.”  

Ever mindful of his local audience, Obama also focused heavily on Medicare, an important issue to the 17.6 percent of Florida’s population over age 65 – more than four percentage points over the national average.

He cited a new study by Harvard Professor David Cutler that found seniors who qualify for Medicare beginning in 2023 would see higher premiums over the course of their retirement under the Romney/Ryan plan, which would give seniors the option of getting a voucher to help pay for private insurance in addition to the traditional government-run program.

Cutler, one of the Obama campaign’s chief health care advisers in 2008, conducted the study on behalf of the Center for American Progress Action Fund, a liberal advocacy organization.

“Basically your profits would decline by the thousands so their profits could rise by the billions,” Obama said of the study’s conclusion.

The Romney campaign responded with a statement from spokesman Ryan Williams calling the study "discredited." 

"President Obama’s latest false attacks are a sign of desperation. Only one candidate in this race has robbed today’s Medicare of $716 billion to pay for Obamacare – Barack Obama. He has done nothing to reform Medicare for the long haul and prevent it from going bankrupt, and on his watch family health care premiums have increased by nearly $2,500," the statement read in part. 

In Melbourne, the president also mentioned another issue important to voters on this slice of Florida’s coast, whose economy is buoyed in part by the space industry.

“Here on the Space Coast, we started a new era of American exploration that is creating more jobs right here,” Obama said, noting the Curiosity rover that landed on Mars last month.

He warned that Republicans would stifle the research and development that his administration has encouraged.

“This is where we’ve got a choice. We could, as the House Republican budget proposes, cut back on research and technology or we can continue to be at the cutting edge because that’s what we’ve always been about,” he said.

The president is now on his way to West Palm Beach for the fourth and final stop on his two-day Sunshine State campaign swing, after which he’ll return to the White House – hopefully, he said this afternoon, in time to catch Sunday Night Football.

“We intend to be finished to get home in time for kickoff,” he told the crowd in Melbourne.

KISSIMMEE, Fla. -- Kicking off a two-day Sunshine State barnstorm Saturday, President Barack Obama tapped into key parts of what he hopes will be a winning Florida coalition similar to but larger than the one he assembled in 2008.

At stops in Seminole and Kissimmee, Fla., the president, who won the Sunshine State by just 50.9 percent in 2008, targeted the votes of senior citizens, warning that their Medicare benefits would be harmed by a plan put forward by his Republican opponents Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan.

“I want you to know, AARP, I would never turn Medicare into a voucher,” Obama said at a civic center here, making an explicit play for members of the 50-and-up club. “I believe no American should ever have to spend their golden years at the mercy of insurance companies.”

Obama lost Florida seniors to John McCain in 2008 but is seeking to do better with them this time around, focusing mainly on appealing to their support of federal entitlements. They’re a lucrative demographic in Florida, having made up 22 percent of the total vote in 2008.

Vice President Joe Biden also brought the “Medicare good, Republicans bad” message to Zanesville, Ohio, where he told a crowd there that Romney and Ryan are “not actually preserving Medicare. They’re for a whole new plan, ‘vouchercare.’"

Pablo Martinez Monsivais / AP

President Barack Obama, left, on stage after being introduced by Viviana Margarita Janer, right, at a campaign event Saturday at the Kissimmee, Fla., Civic Center.

The Romney campaign pushed back on Biden’s attack on Medicare, saying in a statement that Biden “knowingly and deliberately leveled false and discredited attacks.”

Besides seniors, the president also tailored his pitch Saturday to Hispanic voters, who tended to lean Republican in Florida before 57 percent of them voted for Obama in 2008. Introducing him in Kissimmee was Viviana Margarita Janer, a woman who was born in Puerto Rico but has lived in the United States since she was 6 months old.

Janer urged the audience of 3,000 to register to vote, noting that the website gottaregister.com, which Obama frequently hawks on the stump, is also available in Spanish.

“When you put the ‘I voted’ sticker on, you’re going to feel great pride knowing that you gave this man, this great leader, four more years to finish what he started,” she said. 

And earlier in Seminole, Obama praised Hispanic voters as part of the patchwork that gave him a win in Florida in 2008.

“I look out on this crowd, I am reminded you were the change,” he said to a crowd of 10,000 at the Seminole campus of St. Petersburg College, noting “folks… from every walk of life -- black, white, Hispanic, Asian, Native American, young, old, gay, straight, abled, disabled,” he said. 

The president blazed through friendly territory throughout Saturday, first in Pinellas County, home to Seminole, where he won 54 percent of the vote in 2008. And Osceola County, where Kissimmee is, gave him 60 percent of the vote.

Kissimmee has special resonance for the Obama campaign given Bill Clinton’s post-convention status as Obama has been putting it “Secretary of Explaining Stuff:” Kissimmee was the first place the two campaigned together after Obama bested Clinton’s wife, Hillary, in the 2008 Democratic primaries.

During that Oct. 30 speech, Clinton, perhaps still a bit raw from the bruising primary his wife endured, praised Obama as a good decision-maker in part because he had the good sense to consult the Clintons during the financial crisis.

“He talked to his advisers — he talked to my economic advisers, he called Hillary. He called me,” Clinton said. “You know why? Because he knew it was complicated and before he said anything, he wanted to understand,” Clinton said, four years before he would get a bear hug from the now-president after delivering one of the strongest defenses ever of the latter’s policies.

Pablo Martinez Monsivais / AP

President Barack Obama greets supporters Friday during a campaign event at Strawbery Banke Museum in Portsmouth, N.H.

President Barack Obama traveled to Portsmouth, N.H., looking to maintain the momentum from his Thursday night Democratic convention address despite a disappointing jobs report released Friday morning.

Trying not to put too much of a damper on the event – his first since his convention prime-time acceptance speech -- the president sought to put a positive light on the jobs report, which showed a lower-than-expected 96,000 jobs created in August and an 8.1 percent unemployment rate.

“Today we learned that after losing around 800,000 jobs a month when I took office, business once again added jobs for the 30th month in a row,” he told the 6,000-person crowd at the Strawbery Banke Museum.

“But that's not good enough,” he continued. “We need to create more jobs faster. We need to fill the hole left by this recession faster.  We need to come out of this crisis stronger than when we went in.”

He spent much of the rest of his speech hitting similar notes as he did Thursday night – explaining in broad, aspirational language his goals for a second term, including adding a million jobs over the next four years; cutting oil imports in half by 2020; improving access to education and overhauling the tax code.

He also, as he did Thursday night, ridiculed Republicans for what he said was a plan that relied solely on tax cuts for the wealthy intended to encourage economic growth among lower-income people.

“All they've got to offer is the same prescriptions that they've had for the last 30 years:  tax cuts, tax cuts, gut some regulations -- oh, and more tax cuts,” he said. “Tax cuts when times are good, tax cuts when times are bad, tax cuts to help you lose a few extra pounds -- (laughter) –  tax cuts to improve your love life -- I -- it'll cure anything, according to them,” he joked.

It was a similar line to one he used Thursday night, when he also characterized Republicans as depending on tax cuts as a cure-all.

“Feel a cold coming on? Take two tax cuts, roll back some regulations and call me in the morning,” he joked at the Time Warner Cable arena in Charlotte, N.C., at the convention.

On the flight from Charlotte to Portsmouth, White House senior adviser David Plouffe downplayed any sort of positive effect the convention would have on the president’s standing in the polls.

“We come out of the convention with momentum. That doesn't mean the race is going to change significantly. But we think that we come out of here with some momentum in terms of putting together the electoral picture,” he told reporters traveling on the president’s plane.

Obama went on to Iowa City, Iowa, where he was to address students at the University of Iowa. He will then travel to St. Petersburg, Fla., where on Saturday he will kick off a two-day bus tour.

Pablo Martinez Monsivais / AP

President Barack Obama, center, meets with local residents during his tour of the Bridgewood neighborhood in LaPlace, La., in Saint John the Baptist Parish, as he tours the area to survey the ongoing response and recovery efforts to Hurricane Isaac on Monday.

NEW ORLEANS, La. – At the end of a four-day trip filled with campaign events, President Barack Obama put politics aside to visit a Louisiana town hit by Hurricane Isaac and talk with local officials about the recovery effort.

In brief remarks after touring part of the town of LaPlace in St. John the Baptist Parish, the president said he was impressed by the resiliency of the residents.

“There is enormous faith here, enormous strength here you can see it in these families,” he said. “They were just devastated a few days ago and they're already smiling and laughing,” he said.

Local reports say St. John the Baptist Parish experienced up to 18 inches of floodwater from the hurricane, an unprecedented level of flooding for the parish, according to an administration official.

Before his tour of the neighborhood, the president was briefed by local parish officials about the situation in the area and noted that the biggest concern was helping those who had been displaced.

“Obviously, right now we’re still in recovery mode,” he said.

Obama was accompanied by Republican Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, who met him at the airport alongside a bipartisan group that included New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu, Sens. Mary Landrieu and David Vitter, Reps. Cedric Richmond and Jeff Landry and FEMA administrator Craig Fugate.

Thanking the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Obama subtly referred to the recovery efforts to mitigate the damage of Hurricane Katrina in 2005 under former President George W. Bush, which were widely viewed as a failure.

“In the past we sometimes haven’t seen the kind of coordination needed for these kinds of disasters,” Obama said.

But he also emphasized that this type of natural disaster transcends political labels.

“When disasters like this happen we set aside whatever petty disagreements we might have,” Obama said. “Nobody’s a Democrat or a Republican.”

The president returns to Washington, D.C. on Monday evening. He heads Tuesday to Norfolk, Va. for a campaign event.

BOULDER, Colo. – A mountain range in the near distance behind him, President Barack Obama appeared before thousands of just-returning University of Colorado students here, making a play for the youth vote in this crucial Western state. 

“I could see folks forgetting to vote. They’re having too much fun,” he said, urging the 13,000 students on CU Boulder’s Norlin Quad to go to the polls. “That’s why you are so important because you’re going to have to set an example to the person next to you in class. You’re going to have to remind them, have you voted yet?”

Students at schools like CU Boulder contributed to Obama’s 2008 victory, with 66 percent of young voters picking him over 2008 GOP nominee John McCain. But recent polls show young voters losing excitement at the prospect of voting at all in 2012, let alone showing up for Obama in as large numbers as they did last election.

Underscoring the importance of young voters in this state, the Obama campaign last week launched a “Rocky Mountain Rumble,” challenging sports rivals CU Boulder and Colorado State University to see which school can register more voters by Election Day.

Obama, who campaigned at CSU last week, noted that the school had “a little bit of a head start” and was already up by 41 registrants. “Let’s get it done,” he urged the CU Boulder students.

The president also tailored his standard campaign pitch to voters of all ages in this mountainous frontier state, hearkening back to its pioneer roots: “The story of America is about going forward. Nobody understands that better than folks in the West, because you know, this was a region that was settled by people who understand, ‘We’re not looking back, we’re going forward. We’re going forward to the next frontier, to new horizons,’” he said. 

The Romney campaign released a statement in response to Obama's speech today, alluding to Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley, a top Obama surrogate, who on CBS' Sunday morning show Face the Nation responded "no" when asked whether he could "honestly say that people are better off today than they were four years ago

"On the same day that the Obama campaign conceded Americans aren’t better off than they were four years ago, the President offered no solutions to the problems facing our country. Instead of taking us ‘forward,’ President Obama is taking us on a path of declining incomes, high unemployment, and trillion dollar deficits. The Romney-Ryan plan for a stronger middle class will spur economic growth, bring back jobs, and turn our economy around," Romney spokesperson Amanda Henneberg said. 

The Obama campaign is working hard to recapture the nine votes they won in Colorado in 2008 with a 53 to 44 victory over McCain. Of his eleven trips to Colorado since the beginning of his presidency, eight were in 2012, most of which were political.

Boulder County, where Obama spoke today, handed him a resounding 72 percent in 2008. But there were still regions in the state remain deeply red – after all, President Obama was the first Democrat to win Colorado since Bill Clinton did in 1992.

One such area was El Paso County in the southern part of the state, which voted 59 to 40 for McCain. Before his speech today the president sat down for interviews with two TV affiliates from Colorado Springs, the largest city in El Paso County.

Later Sunday, Obama heads to Toledo, Ohio, for a campaign event Monday morning. He’ll then travel to Louisiana where he will tour damage wrought by Hurricane Isaac.

DUBUQUE, IA -- President Obama today pushed back on Republican claims that he’s cutting Medicare and turned the criticism back on his challengers Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan, accusing them of wanting to overhaul Medicare to the detriment of seniors.

Speaking to a crowd of more than 3,000 on the banks of the Mississippi River here, the president first countered charges from Romney and his surrogates that his administration is cutting more than $700 billion in Medicare spending to transfer it to the new health care law.

“They are just throwing everything at the wall to see if it sticks,” he said. “Here’s what you need to know: I have strengthened Medicare. I have made reforms that have saved millions of seniors with Medicare hundreds of dollars on their prescriptions,” he continued, as the crowd cheered.

As First Read has written before, Obama’s plan would slow the growth of Medicare spending, but the cuts would mostly affect insurance and health-care providers, not seniors. Plus, Paul Ryan’s budget plan contains the same cuts.
 
After defending his own plan, the president shifted to offense, tying Romney to Ryan’s Medicare plan, which would give future seniors a voucher or premium support -- to purchase private insurance or purchase it through Medicare.

Larry Downing / Reuters

President Obama speaks at a campaign event at the Alliant Energy Amphitheater in Dubuque, Iowa, August 15.

“Mr. Romney and his running mate have a very different plan. They want to turn Medicare into a voucher program.,” he said. “That means seniors would no longer have the guarantee of Medicare; they’d get a voucher to buy private insurance.”

He wrapped up his riff on Medicare with a sharply worded contrast between his plan and that of his Republican opponents.

“Their plan ends Medicare as we know it. My plan reduces the cost of Medicare by cracking down on fraud and waste and subsidies to insurance companies. Their plan makes seniors pay more so they can give another tax cut to millionaires and billionaires.”

In response to Obama's volleys, the Romney campaign doubled down on its claims, releasing a statement from spokesman Ryan Williams that the president "has a long history of launching shameful political attacks on Medicare -- but he's the only person in the race who has actually cut Medicare. President Obama cut $716 billion from Medicare to pay for Obamacare and our nation's seniors will pay the price with higher costs and fewer benefits." 

Williams added that Romney "will always protect this vital program for seniors and strengthen it for future generations." 

The president was introduced here by his wife Michelle, who joins him for a full day of campaigning in Iowa. She took a softer tone, reminiscing about their 2008 days in the nation’s first caucus state that jump-started Obama’s campaign.

“Thank you for the kindness and generosity and love that you have shown us throughout the state,” the first lady said to cheers.

She seemed to make a call for a more issues-based discourse in contrast with the name-calling and hot rhetoric that has marked the last few weeks on the trail.

“Because of you,” Michelle said of Iowa voters, “Barack and I will always remember what this process can be about at its very best. Every election, you remind us what democracy is all about. It is about people getting into the issues, discussing them with their neighbors,” she said.

The Obamas have one more campaign stop in Iowa -- further east in Davenport.

BOONE, IA -- During the first two stops of his Iowa campaign trip, President Barack Obama took direct aim at Paul Ryan, Mitt Romney’s newly-minted running mate.

But don’t expect the president to make Ryan his permanent foil on this trip.

An Obama campaign official told NBC News that the president isn’t going to talk about Paul Ryan at every event during his three-day swing through Iowa, saying the race is more about the vision for the top of the ticket – Mitt Romney – than it is about Ryan.

But that doesn’t mean the president won’t tie both members of the GOP team with Ryan’s day job in the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, which, along with the Democrat-controlled Senate, is one of the most unpopular institutions in America.

On Monday morning in Council Bluffs, IA, Obama called on Ryan, the House Budget Committee chairman, to convince his colleagues to pass the farm bill, a crucial piece of legislation that was not taken up before Congress left for recess.

“So if you happen to see Congressman Ryan, tell him how important this farm bill is to Iowa and to our rural communities. It’s time to put politics aside and pass it right away,” Obama said.

But Obama dropped that direct appeal at his next stop at a park pavilion in Boone, IA, where he repeated what is already becoming a familiar, albeit softer, line of attack: “Over the weekend my opponent chose as his running mate the ideological leader of the Republicans in Congress. And I’ve gotten to know Congressman Ryan – he’s a good man, he’s a family man, he’s a very articulate spokesperson for Governor Romney’s vision. But it’s a vision I fundamentally disagree with."

Although it may have been politically advantageous for the president to directly address Ryan on Monday (while Ryan, riding high from this weekend’s rollout, also stumped in Iowa), it may be more beneficial for the president to refocus his attacks on the man running to unseat him: Mitt Romney. 

COUNCIL BLUFFS, IA -- President Obama today kicked off his three-day Iowa campaign tour by taking on Paul Ryan directly, branding Mitt Romney's running mate as the embodiment of House Republican refusal to pass a farm bill that would help states like Iowa.

Julie Denesha / Getty Images

President Barack Obama speaks during a campaign stop at Bayliss Park August 13 in Council Bluffs, Iowa.

Obama told 4,500 supporters in the picturesque Bayliss Park here that “things are tough right now” for farmers and ranchers in Iowa, where more than half the state is engulfed in “moderate” level drought according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

CHICAGO, Ill. -- Making his first public remarks since Mitt Romney announced Paul Ryan as his running mate, President Barack Obama gave a double-edged welcome to the new Republican vice presidential nominee, indicating how he seeks to define the new ticket for the remainder of the election. 

Speaking to a crowd of young supporters at the Bridgeport Art Center here, Obama said Mitt Romney’s theories of “top-down economics” were apparent in his vice presidential pick of Ryan, the architect of a controversial deficit-reduction budget proposal that includes restructuring Medicare into a "premium support" or voucher system.

“Just yesterday morning, my opponent chose his running mate – the ideological leader of the Republicans in Congress,” he said, seeking to fuse Ryan’s economic views – mostly admired in conservative circles but also viewed by some as radical – with Romney’s.

“My opponent and Congressman Ryan and their allies in Congress, they all believe that if we just get rid of more regulations on big corporations and we give more tax breaks to the wealthiest Americans, it will lead to jobs and prosperity for everybody else. That’s what they’re proposing. That’s where they’ll take us if they win,” he said. 

Tying Ryan's provocative budget proposals to former Massachusetts Gov. Romney had already been a popular line of attack for the Obama campaign, but the choice of Ryan as a running mate means that tactic will likely become even more prevalent in coming months.

David Axelrod, a senior adviser to President Obama, summed up the choice to pick Ryan on NBC's Meet the Press: "I think that it clarifies the choice for the American people. And I think it clarifies the choice in a way that is going to be helpful."

The crowd started to boo at the first mention of Ryan but Obama urged them to hold their jeers, stressing that his disagreements with the Republican vice presidential hopeful are policy-based, not personal.

“I want to congratulate Congressman Ryan,” Obama said. “I know him. I welcome him to the race. Congressman Ryan is a decent man; he is a family man.” 

Obama’s compliments, however, contained an implicit criticism. The president called Ryan “an articulate spokesman for Governor Romney’s vision. But it’s a vision that I fundamentally disagree with.”

NBC’s Shawna Thomas contributed to this report. Follow her on Twitter.

Charles Dharapak / AP

Republican presidential candidate and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney campaigns at Stepto's Bar-B-Q Shack in Evansville, Ind. on Saturday.

EVANSVILLE, Ind. – Mitt Romney stumped with Tea Party favorite Richard Mourdock on Saturday at a barbecue shack here, seeking to link himself with the popular conservative who unseated a longtime Washington incumbent earlier this year.

“We gotta get this guy elected to the U.S. Senate,” Romney began his speech at Stepto’s Bar-B-Q Shack, a small restaurant off the main highway in Evansville.

As he praised Mourdock, the state treasurer who defeated six-term senator Dick Lugar in the state’s May Republican primary, he seemed to try to affiliate himself with the Tea Party principles Mourdock played up, like a balanced budget.

“You can’t keep spending massively more than you take in,” Romney said as he explained his five key principles for economic recovery. As the crowd drowned him out in applause, he continued, “A treasurer knows that. A governor knows that.”

“There’s only one place in America that doesn’t seem to understand that you can’t keep spending massively more than you take in every year, and that’s Washington. And one reason we’re both going there is to change Washington,” he said.

While this event was billed as a Mourdock campaign event, Romney spent just as much time slamming President Barack Obama, criticizing him for breaking his promise to keep unemployment under 8 percent.

But Mourdock took the spotlight back at the end of the event, criticizing his Democratic Senate opponent, Joe Donnelly, as Romney worked the dining room shaking hands.

“While the governor’s doing that, I have to share with all of you a thought I had coming in today, how proud I am to stand next to the president of the United States, Mitt Romney. And it’s funny, my opponent, Joe Donnelly, doesn’t want to be seen with their candidate, isn’t that amazing?”

Immediately after his short remarks, Romney headed to a fundraiser at the home of local entrepreneur Steven Chancellor, the CEO of the American Patriot Group, the parent company of several subsidiaries.