White House spokesman Josh Earnest said the Obama administration has determined to not make a decision of whether a coup has taken place in Egypt:
Q: Why won't the administration say that it was a coup? Since there was a democratically elected person, he was running it -- people were not happy with what he was doing, but he had been elected. Military came in and knocked him out of office and put him in prison. Why is not a coup?
MR. EARNEST: What we have said, Ed, is that we -- it is the view of this administration that a determination about a coup, about whether it occurred or not, is not a determination that is in the best interests of the United States, that what we're going to do is we're going to set aside this decision about whether or not a coup occurred and evaluate our ongoing relationship with Egypt in a way that maximizes the national security interests of the United States of America.
Q: This administration that prides itself on transparency, why --
MR. EARNEST: I'm being transparent with you, Ed.
Q: You are now, perhaps, but --
MR. EARNEST: And I have been for a week. I answered this question six days ago.
Q: But I'm not suggesting that you have not.
MR. EARNEST: OK.
Q: But why won't this administration writ large be transparent with the American people and the world when they -- the entire world can see military came in, took out a democratically elected president? So -- (inaudible) --
MR. EARNEST: And what I'm saying -- (inaudible) -- something that is available to anybody who seeks an answer to this question, which is that we have made a determination that making a decision about whether or not a coup occurred is not in the best interests of the United States. We've been very candid about that. We've been candid about our posture related to aid and assistance. We delayed the delivery F-16s. That is a decision that was announced publicly. We canceled a joint military exercise known as Bright Star. That is an announcement that the president himself made in Martha's Vineyard last week. At the beginning of July the president announced publicly that our review and -- that our aid and assistance relationship with Egypt was under review.
We have made these announcements and these decisions public, and we've explained to them -- explained to you and to your viewers why these decisions were made and why these actions were taken.