Tag: Barack Obama

Internet knocks Trump for frantic demand to investigate Obama: ‘This is not the tweet of an innocent man’

AlterNet logoPresident Donald Trump jealously raged against Barack Obama’s post-presidency business deals, which includes a production agreement with Netflix — and other social media users ridiculed his apparent envy.

Trump questioned that deal and others in a pair of tweets complaining about an impeachment inquiry launched against him last week by the House Judiciary Committee, and he suggested Congress look at Obama’s business since he left the White House.

Donald J. Trump

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House Judiciary has given up on the Mueller Report, sadly for them after two years and $40,000,000 spent – ZERO COLLUSION, ZERO OBSTRUCTION. So they say, OK, lets look at everything else, and all of the deals that “Trump” has done over his lifetime. But it doesn’t….

Donald J. Trump

✔@realDonaldTrump

….work that way. I have a better idea. Look at the Obama Book Deal, or the ridiculous Netflix deal. Then look at all the deals made by the Dems in Congress, the “Congressional Slush Fund,” and lastly the IG Reports. Take a look at them. Those investigations would be over FAST!

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Other Twitter users, including elected officials, heaped on scorn and mockery.

View the complete September 16 article by Travis Gettys from Raw Story on the AlterNet website here.

The Trump vs. Obama economy — in 15 charts

Washington Post logoIs a recession coming in 2020 or 2021? Experts continue to debate the conflicting signals, but an equally telling question might be: How does the “Trump economy” compare to Barack Obama’s?

President Trump constantly refers to the economy as “strong,” “terrific” and the “greatest in the history of our country,” but a closer look at the data shows a mixed picture in terms of whether the economy is any better than it was in Obama’s final years. The economy is growing at about the same pace as it did in Obama’s last years, and unemployment, whilelower under Trump, has continued a trend that began in 2011.

The best case Trump can make for improvement since he took office is higher wages. The typical American worker’s pay is finally growing more than 3 percent a year, a level not seen since before the Great Recession. Similarly, consumer and business confidence surged after Trump’s election and has remained high, and manufacturing output (and jobs) also saw a noticeable jump in 2018 after Trump’s tax cut, although manufacturing is now struggling. There’s also been a drop in the number of Americans on food stamps.

View the complete August 20 article by Heather Long on The Washington Post website here.

Brutal CNN fact check busts Trump for constantly stealing credit for Obama’s achievements

AlterNet logoCNN’s John Avlon on Thursday exposed President Donald Trump’s habit of taking credit for agreements that were actually made by his predecessor, former President Barack Obama.

In a “Reality Check” segment, Avlon played several video clips of Trump boasting about things he’d supposedly done, although in reality they were done before he even became president.

He starts out by pointing to Trump claiming credit for the opening of a Shell plant in Pennsylvania this week, despite the fact that construction for the plant was first announced by the Obama administration in 2012.

View the complete August 15 article by Brad Reed from Raw Story on the AlertNet website here.

Obama calls on Americans to reject leaders who feed ‘climate of fear and hatred’

The Hill logoFormer President Obama on Monday called for action in response to back-to-back mass shootings over the weekend and urged Americans to “soundly reject” leaders who feed “a climate of fear and hatred.”

The former president issued a lengthy statement after more than 30 people were killed in mass shootings in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio. He did not name any specific leaders, but his comments amounted to an implicit rebuke of President Trump.

“We should soundly reject language coming out of the mouths of any of our leaders that feeds a climate of fear and hatred and 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 in the statement.

View the complete August 5 article by Brett Samuels on The Hill website here.

No, Obama didn’t beg Kim Jong Un for a meeting

Washington Post logo“They couldn’t have meetings. Nobody was going to meet. President Obama wanted to meet, and Chairman Kim would not meet him. The Obama administration was begging for a meeting. They were begging for meetings constantly. And Chairman Kim would not meet with him. And for some reason, we have a certain chemistry or whatever.”

— President Trump, at a news conference with South Korean President Moon Jae-in, Seoul, June 30, 2019

Trump went to the demilitarized zone and crossed the demarcation line on Sunday, becoming the first sitting U.S. president to enter North Korea. It was his third meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

That’s a lot of face time and photo ops. What has Trump gotten in return, aside from a hazy commitment from Kim to denuclearize North Korea? Well, at least Kim is open to discussion, Trump says, after “constantly” rebuffing requests to meet with President Barack Obama.

There’s just one problem with this claim — a total lack of evidence.

View the complete July 2 article by Salvador Rizzo on The Washington Post website here.

The evangelical right wants you to pray for Trump — and forget their shameful smearing of Obama

Franklin Graham and several so-called Christian (religious right) leaders want Sunday to be designated as a day of prayer for Donald Trump under the guise that he is facing attacks like no president has before. The irony is that a  number of these “concerned folks” spent the last eight years smearing and demonizing President Barack Obama in some of the nastiest tones and untrue claims. From questioning his citizenship to claiming that he is paving the way for the Anti-Christ, their attacks had the same slanderous theme – that Obama was a Manchurian candidate who hated Christianity, hated America, and was doing everything in his power to destroy the country:

Franklin Graham once claimed that Russian president Putin’s persecution of his country’s gay citizens was more noble than Obama supporting LGBTQ equality?  Graham also helped to spread the nonsense that Obama wasn’t an American citizen?

Alan Keyes, who Obama defeated for the Senate seat from Illinois in 2004, once called Obama a “radical communist.” He also stoked the birther controversy regarding Obama to the point of pushing an unsuccessful lawsuit about it. In addition, Keyes said that Obama was destroying everything American.

View the complete June 2 article from the Daily Kos on the AlterNet website here.

The case for treating Trump’s tax returns like he treated Obama’s birth certificate

“Donald Trump, with his loud and reckless innuendos, was putting my family’s safety at risk. And for this I’d never forgive him” — Michelle Obama

That’s what Michelle Obama said about Individual 1’s leading role in spreading the racist falsehood known as birtherism: the lie about President Obama’s birthplace that sought to inflame hatred and to ‘other’ the man who, unlike Trump, actually won the presidency with a popular vote majority—twice. As I’ve written elsewhere, Trump managed to go from birther-in-chief to commander-in-chief.

As birther-in-chief, Trump set a standard, if one can call it that, for what passed as truth and fact. It seems appropriate that we apply that same standard to him, now that he is facing questions regarding his tax returns and financial records. These are far more substantive questions deriving from a significantly firmer foundation of evidence than the wild rumors he spewed regarding where Barack Obama was born. You’ve probably heard the old saying about the goose and the gander. Let’s hope the American people eventually get to see those financial documents, and that they thoroughly cook Trump’s goose.

In that spirit, I’d like to repurpose some of the birther remarks made by America’s biggest tax loser, and apply them to his own attempts to prevent the release of his tax returns and other financial records. Let’s see how Trump’s own words make him look.

View the complete May 12 article by Ian Riefowitz of the Daily Kos on the AlterNet website here.

Cheney grills Pence on Trump’s foreign policy

In a private session, the former vice president told the current one that Trump’s policy looks too much like Barack Obama’s.

Dick Cheney lit into Vice President Mike Pence behind closed doors over the direction of the Trump administration’s foreign policy, flouting a set of agreed-upon subjects and forcing Pence on the defensive over President Donald Trump’s foreign policy.

The former vice president interviewed Pence at the American Enterprise Institute’s annual World Forum in Sea Island, Ga., an off-the-record confab attended by approximately 200 top-dollar Republican donors, lawmakers and business leaders who flock to the private island every spring.

Cheney pressed Pence about Trump’s proclivity for making major policy announcements on Twitter and his off-and-on commitment to NATO, according to four meeting attendees and a source briefed on their remarks. The former vice president, who has kept a low public profile in recent years, questioned whether Trump places enough value on the findings of the intelligence community, which he has repeatedly and publicly dismissed. He suggested that Trump foreign policy has at times looked more like President Barack Obama’s — which Cheney has repeatedly lambasted — than that of a Republican standard-bearer.

View the complete March 11 article by Eliana Johnson on the Politico website here.

The War That Wasn’t: Trump Claims Obama Was Ready to Strike North Korea

Credit: J. Scott Applewhite, AP

WASHINGTON — America was on the brink of war. As President Barack Obama prepared to leave office, he was contemplating yet another conflict in Asia, where the United States had already fought twice since the 1950s without winning. This time, the enemy had nuclear weapons. The potential for devastation was enormous.

Wait a minute — don’t remember Mr. Obama’s near-war with North Korea? Neither do the people who were working for Mr. Obama at the time.

But President Trump has been telling audiences lately that his predecessor was on the precipice of an all-out confrontation with the nuclear-armed maverick state. The way Mr. Trump tells the story, the jets were practically scrambling in the hangars.

View the complete February 16article by Peter Baker on The New York Times website here.

The stark contrast between Trump’s trip to Iraq and Obama’s 2009 visit

In April 2009, President Barack Obama made a surprise visit to troops in Baghdad, where he greeted service members and gave an address. (Multi-National Corps Iraq Public Affairs/DVIDS)

President Trump made his first visit to a conflict zone as commander in chief this week, visiting troops at al-Asad Air Base in western Iraq on Wednesday. The unannounced journey took place just days after he declared that he planned to remove U.S. troops from Syria and saw his own defense secretary resign in response.

In April 2009, Trump’s predecessor in the Oval Office, President Barack Obama, made his own trip to Iraq to visit U.S. military personnel. It was his first visit as commander in chief, though he had also visited Iraq in July 2008 as a U.S. senator while campaigning for president.

The contrast between the two trips is sometimes stark — not just because of the timing, but also because of the very different tone they put on display. This itself is a reflection of the different personalities of the two men as commanders in chief, as well as the dramatic changes that have taken place in the Middle East in the past nine years.

View the complete December 27 article by Adam Taylor on The Washington Post website here.