“Trump is for a lot of white people what O. J.’s acquittal was to a lot of Black folks — you know it’s wrong, but it feels good.”
—Barack Obama, quoted in “After the Fall,” a new book by former Obama aide Ben Rhodes
James Traub, who reviews Obama acolyte Rhodes’ book for the New York Times Book Review, calls the quote “funny” and an example of the ex-President’s “almost unearthly equanimity.” I guess that’s one way of describing it. I tend to think the quote is more evidence that Obama is a bigoted asshole.
Despite being labelled a racist by the “resistance”/Democrat/ mainstream media alliance for his entire four years in office, Donald Trump has never had any quote attributed to him as clearly racist as this one. Nor, despite being a undisputed narcissist, has Trump revealed the level of narcissism necessary to equate rejection of his policies or leadership with allowing a double murderer to escape punishment, which is what Obama literally was saying.
While Americans embraced (or rejected) Donald Trump for a wide range of reasons, the claim that they knew it was “wrong” could only issue from a sanctimonious ideologue like Obama, who set the nation firmly on the destructive path of regarding those who disagree with one’s favored world view as evil. It was certainly not “wrong” in 2016 to engage in an equal and opposite reaction against Obama’s cynical, weak, smug, divisive and incompetent Presidency, or to reject the corruption and hypocrisy represented by Hillary Clinton, her rigged journey to the nomination, or the offensive assertion that not voting for her was self-evidently sexist, just as not hailing Barack Obama’s every move was “racist.”
It was not obviously “wrong” to reject the Leftist elite’s push to encourage illegal immigration, or speech suppression, political correctness enforcement, the disarming of private citizens, racial spoils, indoctrination in the schools, the elimination of due process for male students accused of sexual misconduct (since all female accusers must be believed) and U.S. submission to international authority.
Donald Trump, for better or worse, happened to be the candidate whom fate placed in the right place at the right time for Americans to express their legitimate anger and disagreement with the direction of the country, no less so than was Obama himself, a preternaturally lucky candidate with less relevant leadership experience than all but a couple of his predecessors, who was able to parlay a bipartisan economic disaster and a botched war into a classic example of voters deciding, “And now for something completely different!” Other twitches of that human reflex have resulted in such grab-bag choices as Jackson, Harding, Franklin Roosevelt, Kennedy, and Jimmy Carter. Results, obviously, have varied.
Claiming that supporting Donald Trump indicates support for his many ugly and unpresidential character traits is deliberately misleading, but that’s Barack. What propagandists like to call “Trumpism” is no cult of personality, but rather a personal statement that, like Donald Trump, an individual (and not just white individuals) believes in the vision and the courage of the Founders, the good that the American flag symbolizes, the spirit expressed by the National Anthem, American exceptionalism, individual rights and responsibilities, and a national history that has, on balance, not only made the world a better place, but a much better place.
Not only does believing in those things indeed “feel good,” but doing so is definitely not “wrong,” though the radical anti-American domestic movement Obama launched among progressives would have us think so. Obama is wrong.
And that’s the nicest thing I can say about his quote.
Ethics Alarms 
Is there a genuine quantifiable assessment of the root causes behind liberal TDS?
Recall before even holding office, there were helium blimps and lifelike nude statues (sans genitalia) made to mock the man.
Please, anything. Something with the same clarity and illumination as the recent Twitter thread explaining the conservative experience of the past five years.
I can’t dash off something as thorough as that tweet storm, but I’d array the factors as…
1. Fury at losing an election they assumed was in the bag, especially one that was supposed to produce the first female President.
2. Revulsion at Trump’s unstatesmanlike and deliberately provocative rhetoric.
3. Deliberate poisoning of the well by the mainstream media
4. Big lies and scaremongering unprecedented in mainstream American politics, when lesser examples in the 20th Centiry had been confined to losing candidates, like Barry Goldwater
5. Resentment by the Republican establishment over having their party hijacked, greatly inflamed by Trump’s gratuitous insults to the Bushes and John McCain.
6. The fact that Trump lost the popular vote.
7. Class bias against Trump by chablis conservatives like George Will and Bill Kristol
8. Social media producing a “mean girls” effect, where insulting and attacking the President of the US became a pastime and a way to be “cool.”
9. Obama’s years brainwashing too many Americans into really believing that only racists could think that Barack was a lousy President.
10. Trump’s shattering the mold of the Presidential type. defined by the public images, if not necessarily the reality, of Washington, Lincoln, FDR, Ike and Reagan.
I should have added the public perception, again encouraged by the media, that Trunp was “just a reality TV star,” an order of magnitude up from the slur that Ronald Reagan was “just an actor.”
Thanks. Odd seeing a person simultaneously so popular and unpopular at the same time. Obama also puzzled me, “He’s such a good speaker!” was the draw I heard the most… But no, he was a good speech _reader_, anything said on the fly was so painful to listen or read the transcript of.
Fitting in on #2 and #9 of your list, a factor dawned on me reading about the 2011 WH correspondents dinner, the article noted Trump to be a central figure in the birtherism controversy.
I hope this isn’t social media’s permanent influence to politics, in the same sense television made visual appearance important under the election of Kennedy.
One thing that has to be kept in mind: it’s undisputed that the Clinton campaign and the DNC pursued via its media allies a policy of promoting Trump in order to sow chaos within the 2016 Republican primaries. Obama was the head of the party that did that. Thus, Obama promoted Trump and is responsible for his rise.
Any ethical political party, having lost by a razor-thin margin to an opponent they had themselves promoted, would have followed that loss with a thorough blood-letting. Anyone with knowledge of the plan, let alone participation in it, should have been purged forever from any position of influence within the party, but that never happened. Instead we’ve seen gambit after gambit by those very people to keep the country, not incidentally keeping them in their comfy chairs.
edit: to keep the country “in turmoil.”
But, the DNC has not had that kind of reckoning. Look at Ocasio-Cortez and her ilk. They have supported hard-left candidates and have failed miserably but they are the ones leading the party’s agenda. Robert O’Roarke is another example: every candidate he has supported over that 2 to 3 election cycles have failed and have been trounced in the polls but, here in Texas, the media think he is just swell and will turn Texas blue in 2022 and will be the next Governor of Texas (God help us all!)
jvb
1. Fury at losing an election they assumed was in the bag, especially one that was supposed to produce the first female President.
2. Revulsion at Trump’s unstatesmanlike and deliberately provocative rhetoric.
3. Deliberate poisoning of the well by the mainstream media
4. Big lies and scaremongering unprecedented in mainstream American politics, when lesser examples in the 20th Centiry had been confined to losing candidates, like Barry Goldwater
5. Resentment by the Republican establishment over having their party hijacked, greatly inflamed by Trump’s gratuitous insults to the Bushes and John McCain.
6. The fact that Trump lost the popular vote.
7. Class bias against Trump by chablis conservatives like George Will and Bill Kristol
8. Social media producing a “mean girls” effect, where insulting and attacking the President of the US became a pastime and a way to be “cool.”
9. Obama’s years brainwashing too many Americans into really believing that only racists could think that Barack was a lousy President.
10. Trump’s shattering the mold of the Presidential type. defined by the public images, if not necessarily the reality, of Washington, Lincoln, FDR, Ike and Reagan.
11. The fact that Trump started to actually execute on his campaign promises.
12. Bitterness over the failed Garland nomination.
13. Hilary brainwashing too many folks into believing only a sexist could vote for Trump.
14. The media establishment brainwashing too many people to believe that Trump was a racist, a homophobe, a xenophobe, and every other kind of hater.
15. Rent-a-mob protests right after the election, even before he was sworn in.
16. People like the leaders of Antifa and BLM (which came to be under Obama) stuffing people’s heads with the idea that violence and destruction were justified if you were angry enough.
17. The media publishing out and out lies like the Steele dossier.
18. The entertainment industry turning as one against the president and shutting him out.
19. Social media producing an easy way to gang up on those you disagreed with and sometimes inflict real-world consequences.
20. 2020 – which would have been tough sledding for a perfect president with the country and the media united behind him.
“18. The entertainment industry turning as one against the president and shutting him out.”
And shutting out anyone who had anything to do with him, even if it was just performing at the Inauguration or appearing at a White House function.
What I find funny about Obama’s statement is that it’s almost like he agrees with Ann Coulter:
“Millions of Americans watched as a mostly black jury acquitted an obviously guilty black celebrity and saw black America cheer the verdict. The sight of black law students whooping and applauding O.J.’s acquittal had the same emotional impact as watching Palestinians celebrate the 9/11 attack.”
https://anncoulter.com/2012/09/26/liberals-cant-break-200-year-racism-habit/
The optimist in me looks at this and the “Dear Kamala Harris: It’s a Trap!” article, and sees signs that the Left is starting to realize the trap they’ve dug for themselves with the “anti-racism” shovel. Now they seem to be trying to get themselves out as carefully and subtly as possible.
Jack, your post was its own COTD. Well done. If historians are more honest than journalists and we’re still around in a generation to read books, President Obama will be penned into history as one of the country’s very worst Chief Executives.
Both President Obama and President Trump were arrogant, but I detected a subtle difference. President Trump’s attitude tended to originate from the belief that he right. President Obama’s came from a position that he was superior, hence the smugness you reference. The notion that disagreement with President Obama was racist may not have originated with President Obama – though it could have – but he certainly supported it and made use of it.
I rank him with FDR and Wilson on the racism scale.
Obama will become a president who is, as most presidents since probably Carter are, adored by some, loathed by others. There is plenty to criticize him on that doesn’t go within a mile of his color. Unfortunately, because of last year, most writers won’t dare be honest. Unless and until this country squelches the idea that personal attacks and mob violence are acceptable forms of political expression, no one will dare express an uncomfortable truth or give an honest, well-supported opinion.
And, his relative youth, like Carter’s, when he left office means he’ll be around for years and years so that people can continue to solicit his opinion on everything.