When Democrats took turns bashing Barack Obama’s legacy during last week’s Democratic debate, it was clear how far left the party had shifted in just a few short years.
But the president who stoked racial tensions over police shootings was never a moderate either — and he proved it on Monday with a lengthy screed blaming President Donald Trump, “white nationalist websites,” and guns for mass shootings. The former president implicitly blamed Trump for a “climate of fear and hatred” and stumped for the gun reforms like the ones he failed to enact during his tenure.
“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.
— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) August 5, 2019
Obama blames Trump, guns for mass shootings
Earlier this year, the former president seemed worried when he cautioned Democratic candidates for president not to destroy each other in a “circular firing squad” of politically correct puritanism. But Obama, the president who pushed hard for gun control and extra-judicial amnesty, was never much of a moderate himself. In the wake of two mass shootings in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio that killed more than 30 over the weekend, the former president called for gun control, Internet censorship, and a nationwide rejection of President Trump’s rhetoric.
“We are not helpless here,” Obama said, citing “evidence” that gun control works. “And until all of us stand up and insist on holding public officials accountable for changing our gun laws, these tragedies will keep happening.”
Without naming Trump, Obama joined the chorus of Democrats who blamed him for the violence and called on Americans to reject rhetoric that “normalizes” racism or “demonizes those who don’t look like us,” adding that it “has no place in our politics and public life.” He compared Trump’s rhetoric to the hatred that fueled the Holocaust, the Rwandan Genocide, slavery, Jim Crow, and ethnic cleansing in the Balkan peninsula.
Obama added that the El Paso shooter, like ISIS terrorists, was “radicalized” online and called on law enforcement and social media platforms to censor “white nationalist” sites. Considering the recklessness with which the left uses the “racism” label, Obama’s call for censorship sounds eerily vague. Does Obama consider Breitbart, for example, a “white nationalist” site?
“[T]here are indications that the El Paso shooting follows a dangerous trend: troubled individuals who embrace racist ideologies and see themselves obligated to act violently to preserve white supremacy,” he wrote. “That means that both law enforcement agencies and internet platforms need to come up with better strategies to reduce the influence of these hate groups,” he wrote.
Obama was always a progressive
During last week’s debate, Obama’s own vice president — who Obama has not yet endorsed — fell into the cross-hairs of the figurative “firing squad” that Obama lambasted, as Democratic candidates attacked Biden over his deportation of illegal immigrants — a practice now concerned virtually barbaric by the new generation of open borders Democrats. Indeed, Democrats of the “squad” generation have veered far, far to the left of even Obama himself — from Obamacare to Medicare, from “immigration reform” to abolishing borders.
Considering how utterly bonkers the left has become, the Democrats of the Obama years almost seem reasonable by comparison. But before there was the “squad,” there was the president who set the stage for their revolution. Despite Obama’s “moderate” image, the “deporter in chief” repeatedly stoked divisions through his eight years when he blamed Republicans for the country’s failings, or said that Trayvon Martin “could have been me,” or pushed gay marriage and transgender bathrooms on the country.
During his eight years, Obama proved to be an authoritarian progressive who used the power of the bully pulpit to push a far-left agenda. He clearly hasn’t given up on his dreams of gun control, but his illegal amnesty, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), lives on for now. The truth is, Obama has always been an elitist progressive who looked down on American patriots: before winning the election, Obama bashed “bitter clingers” in the heartland who turned to their Bibles and guns out of “resentment” over economic deprivation.
Again, Obama is showing the same authoritarian, narcissist, elitist streak that marked his presidency. Despite presiding over one of the most imperial presidencies in recent history, Obama now sees fit to add to the whirlwind of divisions he helped create — with more moralizing and calls for regulation over citizens’ lives.
But Trump isn’t falling for it. The president responded Tuesday in a tweet that quoted the hosts of “Fox and Friends.” “Did George Bush ever condemn President Obama after Sandy Hook. President Obama had 32 mass shootings during his reign. Not many people said Obama is out of Control. Mass shootings were happening before the President even thought about running for Pres,” Trump tweeted.
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