Another day, another president complaining about fake news.
No, not Donald Trump. This time, it’s Barack Obama. Again.
While the mainstream media complain that Trump has targeted the Fourth Estate in an unprecedented assault on the First Amendment, former President Obama has been doing it for years. Obama hated Fox News and complained about the No. 1 network every chance he got. He also detested conservative news organizations, once kicking The Washington Times and the New York Post off his campaign plane.
Obama was at it again on Friday, moaning about Fox News. He said anyone who watches the network is “living on a different planet.” For Obama, everyone should just tune in to National Public Radio to get their news.
Obama appeared on David Letterman’s new monthly Netflix series “My Next Guest Needs No Introduction.” The former “Late Night” talk show host asked Obama what he thinks is the more dangerous threat to a democracy — when the president complains about the press, or when a foreign power sabotages the U.S. election (yes, Letterman has always been an uber-liberal, and both questions were just a way to demean the current president).
Obama said complaining about the press is bad — and then did exactly that.
“One of the biggest challenges we have to our democracy is the degree to which we don’t share a common baseline of facts,” Obama said. “If you watch Fox News, you are living on a different planet than you are if you are listening to NPR.”
He added, “What the Russians exploited, but it was already here, is we are operating in completely different information universes,” reports The Hill.
What’s hilarious about Obama’s complaint is that it puts the lie to everything liberals and the media have been moaning about since Trump took office. They say Trump is attacking the media and claim nothing like that has ever happened. But presidents always — always — have news outlets they dislike, all the way back to George Washington. Although the studio audience applauded Obama’s whining, he was doing just what he said Trump does — targeting the media.
And he did it throughout his two terms in office. Obama once accused Fox of “attacking” his administration during an interview with CNBC, and he almost never did interviews with any news organization that didn’t agree with his politics.
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich mocked Obama in a Friday appearance on Sean Hannity’s show. “Many, many years from now in a nursing home, or a nice retirement community, Barack Obama will be still living in a fantasy life,” Gingrich said. “He’ll think that Iran really wanted to have a deal, he’ll think that high taxes really work, he’ll think that welfare’s a good deal.”
Said Hannity, “There is some truth in what he’s saying in this regard. He’s right, the mainstream media, they want to destroy Trump and they loved him. It’s that simple.”