Regrets? He has a few: Former President Barack Obama now admits he made a huge mistake when he insulted millions of Americans who value faith and the Constitution.
And he’s trying to literally rewrite his own history.
Obama is out with a new memoir, “A Promised Land,” a 700-page self-tribute that is the first of two volumes on himself and his administration.
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In it, he laments the 2008 comments that cost him the support of Americans who had been left behind as manufacturers abandoned the United States for cheaper overseas plants, devastating entire communities.
But Obama didn’t offer words of empathy and a promise of a fair shake with new and better policies.
He infamously attacked them.
“They fell through the Clinton Administration, and the Bush Administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are going to regenerate and they have not,” Obama said at the time, correctly noting the very real frustrations of vanishing middle America.
But then his comments took a dark and offensive turn.
Instead of praising their resilience and vowing to do better for them, he attacked those forgotten Americans. He slammed them by invoking an ugly stereotype – one that not only attacks these entire communities, but also insults two of the things they hold dear.
“And it’s not surprising then they get bitter,” he said. “They cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”
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In many ways, those comments set the stage for the rise of President Donald Trump, who spoke directly to these communities without patronizing or insulting them.
Now, Obama admits it was the “biggest mistake” of his first presidential campaign – and he wants to take it all back.
“Even today, I want to take that sentence back and make a few simple edits,” Obama writes in his book. “I would say in my revised version: ‘and they look to the traditions and way of life that have been constants in their lives, whether it’s their faith, or hunting, or blue-collar work, or more traditional notions of family and community.’”
That’s not a “simple edit.”
That’s a very different sentiment – and those who were insulted by his earlier comments might wonder if he’s really sorry… or just trying to sell a book.
Obama has been in the headlines more than most ex-presidents as he continues to shatter norms.
While former presidents have often endorsed their party’s candidates and spoken at conventions, most have carefully avoided direct attacks on the current occupant of the White House and day-to-day political sniping.
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But that changed when Obama became former president.
Many of his attacks didn’t mention Trump by name. During the early days of the coronavirus crisis, for example, Obama tweeted that the nation lacked a “coherent national plan to navigate this pandemic.”
In 2018, also not mentioning Trump by name, Obama warned of leaders prone to “making up whatever facts they want,” which critics took as a direct shot at the current president.
As the election approached, however, he went into full attack mode… as if he were the candidate running against Trump instead of Joe Biden.
Now, as he tries to juice his book sales, he’s escalated his verbal assaults on Trump.
In an appearance this week on “Jimmy Kimmel Live,” for example, Obama cracked that there are ways to get Trump out of the White House beyond a formal transition.
“Well, I think we can always send the Navy SEALS in there to dig him out,” he said.
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It’s not hard to imagine how the media would’ve reacted if Trump has said that about him.
— Walter W. Murray is a reporter for The Horn News. He is an outspoken conservative and a survival expert, and is the author of “America’s Final Warning.”