Barack Obama took on the fight against Donald Trump and Fox News.
Obama returned to the campaign trail to push for Democrats to win control of Congress.
But when he stood up to speak, he told a lie about Fox News that no one could believe.
Barack Obama Returns
Barack Obama has returned to the campaign trail.
He gave a speech in Chicago that all three cable news channels broadcasted live.
Obama used his speech to attack Donald Trump and Republicans.
He pushed for voters to hand Democrats control of Congress.
“I’m here today because this is one of those pivotal moments when every one of us as citizens of the United States needs to determine just who we are, what it is that we stand for,” he said. “As a fellow citizen, not as an ex-president, I’m here to deliver a simple message, which is that you need to vote, because our democracy depends on it.”
In addition, Obama whined that he should get the credit for Trump’s economic boom.
“Let’s just remember when this recovery started,” Obama said. “Suddenly Republicans are saying, ‘It’s a miracle!’ I have to remind them that those job numbers are the same as they were in 2015, 2016.”
Obama Lies About Fox News
But Obama told one lie about Fox News that caught everyone’s attention.
Obama ripped Trump for calling the fake news media the enemy of the people.
He compared that to his attacks on Fox News.
Obama said, “I complained plenty about Fox News, but you never heard me threaten to shut them down or call them ‘enemies of the people.’”
This is a lie.
Trump calls the press names.
Journalists whine about their hurt feelings.
But Obama took real action to silence the media.
He spied on Associated Press reporters.
Obama also named Fox News reporter James Rosen as an unindicted co-conspirator in a leak investigation.
Obama Called Out for Lying
Even left-wing journalists called out Obama for this lie.
Did substantially increase leak prosecutions, however. https://t.co/n3XhTJNE2I
— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) September 7, 2018
And Obama did try to shut out Fox News.
In 2009, the administration said they would make Washington’s “pay czar” Kenneth Feinberg available for interviews to every network except Fox.
They backed down when the other networks said they would not do the interview unless Obama granted Fox access to Feinberg.
Finally, Obama’s White House Communications Director Anita Dunn claimed Fox was not real news.
She said Fox was really part of the Republican Party.
“The reality of it is that Fox News often operates almost as either the research arm or the communications arm of the Republican Party. And it is not ideological… what I think is fair to say about Fox, and the way we view it, is that it is more of a wing of the Republican Party,” Dunn said.
She continued, “Obviously [the President] will go on Fox because he engages with ideological opponents. He has done that before and he will do it again… when he goes on Fox he understands he is not going on it as a news network at this point. He is going on it to debate the opposition.”
Obama lied in his speech.
Trump calls the media names.
But Obama spied on reporters.
He threatened to jail them.
And he said the same things about Fox News that Trump says about CNN and other fake news media outlets.
We will keep you up to date on any new developments in this story.
