Washington: President Barack Obama has insisted he was "furious" about the US oil disaster but that "yelling" would be pointless, as aides sought to portray the leader as engaged despite his trademark cool demeanour.
Officials also disputed a growing media narrative that political trauma over the worst environmental catastrophe in US history would derail Obama`s second term agenda, even as doubts grew over his pending trip to Asia.
But as the White House fired its latest shots in the public relations battle over the spill, new video emerged of helpless sea birds coated in chocolate-coloured oil, likely to further sharpen media anguish.
In a new attempt to demonstrate its engagement, the White House said that Obama would make his third trip to the Gulf of Mexico coast today, and he appeared on CNN talk show `Larry King Live` to discuss the catastrophe.
"I would love to just spend a lot of my time venting and yelling at people, but that is not what I was hired to do -- my job is to solve this problem," Obama said, in an excerpt from the show.
"I am furious at this entire situation. This is something where somebody didn`t think through the consequences of their actions," he added.
"Ultimately this isn`t about me and how angry I am."
White House spokesman Robert Gibbs had earlier hit back at a growing media frenzy, along the lines that the President should simply "do something" to stop the gushing undersea well clogging the Gulf with a thick slick of oil.
"If jumping up and down and screaming would fix a hole in the ocean, we`d have done that five or six weeks ago. We`d have done that the first night," Gibbs said.
PTI
