Does NBC News read NBC News?
The outlet reported Saturday that former President Barack Obama hasn’t been attacking President Donald Trump since the latter took office. In an article titled “Obama’s homestretch itinerary: On the campaign trail — and inside Trump’s head,” NBC breathlessly claimed: “For nearly four years, the former president refrained from attacking his successor. As he took to the trail on Biden’s behalf in the 2020 race’s closing days, the gloves came off.”
To even casual political observers, this is obviously false. Obama has taken an unprecedented number of potshots at Trump over the past four years. Even NBC reported on the former president’s sniping three months ago.
“The former president’s unusual flaying of his successor served as a historical marker — and a powerful political weapon for the Democratic ticket,” NBC reported in August.
In mid-October, before he took to the campaign trail for Biden, Obama told his former staffers on “Pod Save America” that Trump “doesn’t have the patience and the focus to really substantially change a lot of U.S. foreign policy.”
As The Daily Wire’s Emily Zanotti previously reported, this is absurd, since the Trump administration has negotiated deals with three Middle East countries to normalize relations with Israel and hasn’t started any new wars. Meanwhile, Zanotti wrote, Obama had numerous foreign policy failures, among them:
[S]upporting the tyrannical Iranian regime, the largest terrorist-supporting government on earth; championing the dangerous Iran nuclear deal; withdrawing U.S. forces from Iraq in late 2011, leading to the rise of ISIS; ousting Libya’s Moammar Gadhafi, thus paving the way for anarchy and ISIS to gain a foothold there, and conducting a “reset” with Russia while Russian military gained ground in eastern Ukraine
NBC had reported on Obama’s Trump trashing when the former president insulted Trump during the Democratic National Convention, saying Trump “hasn’t grown into the job because he can’t.” Mainstream media outlets predictably cheered Obama’s diatribe.
Obama also took some shots at Trump during his eulogy for the late Rep. John Lewis (D-GA).
“Even as we sit here, there are those in power who are doing their darndest to discourage people from voting by closing polling locations, and targeting minorities and students with restrictive ID laws, and attacking our voting rights with surgical precision – even undermining the postal service in the run up to an election that’s going to be dependent on mail-in ballots so people don’t get sick,” Obama said, in clear reference to Trump and Republicans.
In typical Obama fashion, his claims were wildly misleading.
That same week, Obama reportedly bashed Trump during a Zoom call with Democratic lawmakers and donors, referencing the Third Reich and insulting Trump’s supporters. Obama also became the first president in 40 years not to attend the unveiling of his own portrait at the White House.
In May, Obama gave a virtual commencement address to 2020 high school graduates, claiming Trump (without mentioned him by name) and his administration don’t know what they’re doing and are acting like children. That same month, in a private conversation with former members of his administration that was leaked to the press, Obama bashed Trump by claiming he has fomented selfishness across not only America, but the world.
“What we’re fighting against is these long-term trends of being selfish, being tribal, being divided, and seeing others as an enemy — that has become a stronger impulse in American life. And by the way, we’re seeing that internationally as well. It’s part of the reason why the response to this global crisis has been so anemic and spotty. It would have been bad even with the best of governments,” Obama said.
Obama also used his speech at late Rep. Elijah Cummings’ (D-MD) funeral to knock the current administration, suggesting they were not “honorable.”
In August 2019, Obama took a swipe at Trump over mass shootings
“We should soundly reject language coming out of the mouths of any of our leaders that feeds a climate of fear and hatred or normalizes racist sentiments; leaders who demonize those who don’t look like us, or suggest that other people, including immigrants, threaten our way of life, or refer to other people as sub-human, or imply that America belongs to just one certain type of people,” Obama said, reiterating the Left’s accusation against Trump.
In January 2019, Obama told Democratic donors that America has “a deficit of leadership, and we need new blood.”
In November 2018, Obama suggested the reason we don’t tackle climate change is because “we are still confused, blind, shrouded with hate, anger, racism, mommy issues.” Some saw this as a shot at Trump.
In October 2018, Obama took a shot at Trump by claiming: “Unlike some I actually try to state facts. I believe in facts. I believe in a fact-based reality and a fact based politics. I don’t believe in just making stuff up.” As The Daily Wire reported at the time, Obama lied plenty during and after his presidency. The former president made similar remarks in July 2018.
In September of that year, Obama told Americans that Trump was dividing Americans and that people should vote for Democrats to bring “unity.”
In May 2018, Obama released a statement against Trump pulling out of the Iran nuclear deal that the Obama administration negotiated, a deal that made the world less safe.
As far back as December 2017, Obama reportedly compared the era of Trump to Adolf Hitler’s reign.
“That’s what happened in Germany in the 1930s, which, despite the democracy of the Weimar Republic and centuries of high-level cultural and scientific achievements, Adolph Hitler rose to dominate,” Obama reportedly said, among other comparisons. “Sixty million people died. . . .So, you’ve got to pay attention. And vote.”
These examples don’t even include the way the outgoing Obama administration treated Trump’s 2016 campaign, by obtaining FISA warrants to investigate campaign aides based on rumors and innuendo. That investigation morphed into a year-long probe by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, which found the Trump campaign didn’t collude with Russia to steal the 2016 election, as the Obama administration alleged. Further, an Inspector General report found numerous errors and omissions in the FISA warrant applications that trumped up the “evidence” against the campaign aides in the first place in order to obtain the warrants to investigate them.