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As the #NeverTrump movement continues to dwindle, the few pundits remaining are becoming more and more detached from reality the further we journey into Trump’s presidency.
Take it from Washington Post columnist Max Boot, who recently seceded from the Republican Party by branding them a bunch of white supremacists and linking them to Nazi Germany. He also argued on CNN that the leaders of Iran, the same people who constantly call for the deaths of America and Israel, are “more stable and rational” than our current president. But it was last week when he wrote a column saying he misses President Obama so much that he’d “take him back in nanosecond” if he could.
Boot spent the column fawning over Obama, specifically for the speech he gave last week honoring Nelson Mandela. Reading his lovey-dovey praise for the 44th president was reminiscent of MSNBC’s Chris Matthew’s “thrill up my leg” remark.
But the most egregious part was the following: “Can you believe that an Obama-era scandal was that the president wore a tan suit or put his feet up on the desk?… Oh, to have those days back again — before we had a president who was involved in indecent relationships with a Russian despot and (allegedly) a porn star.”
So Boot apparently is now pushing Democratic talking points for a living. Seriously? After eight years of commenting on the Obama years, he points to Obama’s tan suit and feet on the Oval Office desk as the “scandals” of his presidency? Maybe Boot needs a recap of the actual scandals that took place under his beloved President Obama.
There was the botched Operation Fast and Furious, where Obama’s Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives lost track of thousands of firearms they knowingly sold to Mexican cartels. One of the guns was used in the murder of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry. Obama Attorney General Eric Holder became the first cabinet member to be held in contempt of Congress for refusing to hand over documents pertaining to their investigation into the failed sting operation.
There was that time the Obama administration systemically peddled lies about the Benghazi terrorist attack leading up to the 2012 election. For a long time administration officials portrayed the attack as peaceful protest over a YouTube video that went awry. It was eventually unearthed that the murder of four Americans was premeditated and that murdered Ambassador Chris Stevens had repeatedly requested increased security at the U.S. embassy, to no avail.
How about all those times Obama’s Department of Justice actually took actions against the free press? From seizing phone records from AP journalists, going after Fox News’ James Rosen as a “criminal co-conspirator,” to the alleged tampering of Sharyl Attkisson’s computer, the previous president did more to actively suppress the media versus the current president, who merely mocks them on Twitter and at his rallies.
We can’t forget arguably the most abusive scandal of the Obama years, the Internal Revenue Service’s targeting of conservatives, something Boot now dismisses because a couple of liberal groups were targeted too despite the fact that the bureau even issued a mea culpa years later.
Then there’s that horrible swap of deserter Sgt. Bowe Berghdahl for five Taliban terrorists. President Obama welcomed his parents in a Rose Garden ceremony celebrating his liberation, and National Security Advisor Susan Rice proudly, falsely declared Bergdahl had served with “honor and distinction.” Meanwhile, his troop put their lives on the line in rescue efforts.
We shouldn’t overlook all the dishonesty that led to the Iran nuclear deal, either. Not only did the State Department lie while desperately cooking up their one-sided negotiation, they actually edited archived press conferences in an attempt to cover their tracks. And our American hostages who were held in Iran had to wait on a tarmac until nearly $2 billion in cash was delivered to the No. 1 state sponsor of terrorism.
Also, how can Boot possibly omit Hillary Clinton’s email scandal? For starters, she jeopardized national security by using an unsecure private server while serving as secretary of state. Despite her emails being subpoenaed by Congress, her servers were bleached clean, her Blackberry devices were smashed with hammers, and 33,000 of her emails were unrecovered.
Plus, President Obama lied to the public when he said he was unaware of Clinton’s server. It was discovered after his presidency that he was one of the few contacts who had corresponded directly with her private, unsecured email address.
There are myriad examples of Obama-era controversies, from scamming the American people about Obamacare and claiming they could “keep their doctor,” to his National Security Agency’s unvetted surveillance of private citizens, the out-of-control Veterans Affairs waitlists, and calling ISIS a “JV” team.
It’s one thing for a principled conservative to oppose President Trump’s character. However, it’s another thing to not acknowledge the good he has done for the conservative agenda. On top of that, it’s another thing to rewrite history and pretend that the Obama presidency was scandal-free.
For Boot to point to Obama’s tan suit as the most prominent scandal of his administration is not only blatantly false, it is completely dishonest. While it works as red meat for his target audience, which is now exclusively the #Resistance, parroting moronic talking points this way simply makes this supposed intellect a complete fool.