“Former president Barack Obama, an avid book reader, will host a new podcast starting next month to talk with guests about volumes that have affected them,” the Washington Post reports.
Said Obama: “At a time when fewer people are able to sit down with a book, it’s important to remember the joy and power that can come from reading. And some books don’t just tell a story — they change the way we see the world.”
“Former President Barack Obama will hold a fund-raiser in late August for the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, a fresh sign that Democrats intend to continue their aggressive push to gerrymander congressional districts ahead of the 2028 election,” the New York Times reports.
“Lara Trump has come under fire after claiming the recently opened Obama Presidential Center was funded by taxpayer dollars,” The Wrap reports.
“However, per the Chicago Sun-Times, the center was funded entirely through private donations, including $125 million from AirBnB co-founder Brian Chesky and $100 million from Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.”
“The friendship between former first lady Michelle Obama and former President George W. Bush was on display again Thursday at the Obama Presidential Center’s opening ceremony in Chicago,” CBS News reports.
“Ahead of the ceremony, Bush gifted Obama a tin of Altoids in a callback to one of their viral moments at the funeral for Sen. John McCain in 2018. The former president was caught sneaking Obama what was later said to be a cough drop during the funeral.”
“Former first lady Michelle Obama delivered a loving and heartfelt tribute to her husband at the Obama Presidential Center’s grand opening ceremony in Chicago Thursday,” CBS News reports.
Said Mrs. Obama: “You told me all those years ago that you couldn’t promise me the world, but you could promise me an interesting life and of course you outdid yourself and managed to give me both.”
“The opening of the Obama Presidential Center in Chicago on Thursday will be a celebration of the legacy of former President Barack Obama and his accomplishments,” CNBC reports.
“The star-studded event that will feature an address from Obama and performances by Stevie Wonder, Bruce Springsteen and Jennifer Hudson is also expected to be the biggest gathering of donors, fundraisers and business leaders aligned with the Democratic Party ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.”
Barack Obama is viewed positively by 57% of Americans, a new CNN poll finds, far surpassing the ratings for his two Oval Office successors. Only 34% of the public offers a favorable opinion of President Donald Trump, with former President Joe Biden’s favorability trailing at just 30%.
Obama’s standing among political independents is more than twice as high as either Biden’s or Trump’s. Unlike Biden or Trump, he also has the near-universal backing of his own party.
“Barack Obama’s long-awaited presidential center opens this week poised as a monument to contradiction as much as to the former president,” Bloomberg reports.
“Intended as a celebration of the progress embodied by the nation’s first Black leader, its Juneteenth unveiling comes at a time when his agenda — and broader diversity initiatives — are wilting from a decade of concerted attack.”
“An implicit repudiation of his brash, populist successor, the $850 million monolith nevertheless towers over Chicago’s Midway Plaisance. Imposing in both scope and scale, the so-called “Obamalisk” is as overt an attempt to use architecture to personify his legacy as the current president’s oft-ridiculed calls to remake Washington with oversized monuments and gold leaf.”
CNBC: “The sprawling, 19.3-acre, $850 million campus blends museum exhibits chronicling former President Barack Obama’s political rise and presidency with contemporary art, public gathering spaces, athletic facilities and a branch of the Chicago Public Library.”
“The center is also poised to redefine the scale of the modern presidential project, setting new marks for construction time, cost and admission price. A general museum ticket will cost $30, making it the most expensive presidential museum or library to visit.”
New York Times: “Barack Obama first came to national fame more than two decades ago with a stirring speech declaring that there was not a red America and a blue America, only a United States of America. And yet, all these years later, Mr. Obama is about to open a presidential museum that seems to prove the opposite.”
“It would be hard to visit the Obama Presidential Center, which has risen on Chicago’s South Side, and not come away thinking that there really are separate Americas. It is a trip to a parallel universe, one suffused in earnest talk of hope and change, not dark warnings about American carnage, one marching toward a multiracial, progressive future rather than dismantling a suffocating woke tyranny.”
“We can survive a lot: bad policies, funky elections. There’s a bunch of stuff we can overcome. We can’t overcome the politicization of the criminal justice system — the awesome power of the state. You can’t have a situation in which whoever is in charge of the government starts using that to go after their political enemies or reward their friends.”
— Former President Barack Obama, in an interview with Stephen Colbert.
New York Times: “Mr. Obama and his team never saw Mr. Trump coming, as a new set of oral history interviews released on Tuesday makes abundantly clear. He was, to them, a ‘con man,’ a ‘clown,’ a ‘laughingstock.’ He was a thorn in the side with his birther lies and demagogic bloviating.”
“But as it turned out, Mr. Obama and his advisers, like many others, missed the shifting mood of the country that would ultimately upend Mr. Axelrod’s assumptions.”
Former President Barack Obama spoke out a week after President Donald Trump’s social media account posted a video depicting him and former first lady Michelle Obama as apes, condemning behavior on television and social media as a “clown show,” ABC News reports.
Said Obama: “Well, first of all, I think it’s important to recognize that the majority of the American people find this behavior deeply troubling.”
He added: “And there’s this sort of clown show that’s happening in social media and on television… What is true is that there doesn’t seem to be any shame about this among people who used to feel like you had to have some sort of decorum and a sense of propriety, and respect for the office, right? So, that’s been lost.”
“Barack Obama used to be confident America would survive Donald Trump. He’s not so sure anymore,” CNN reports.
“The 44th president can still draw a crowd of thousands or dial Gavin Newsom’s cell phone to strategize about the California governor’s redistricting push. But friends who talk to him say it’s become clear that eight years out of the White House, darkness and anxiety have crept in on Obama’s message of hope and change.”
“After deliberately stepping back during the Biden years — while remaining the party’s biggest fundraiser even then — Obama and his aides are reworking his longstanding strategy of minimizing his public presence to allow the next generation of Democrats to emerge. Trump’s moves to block Democrats from power since his return to the White House and his calls to indict or shut down liberal institutions might, Obama fears, deny that next generation the chance.”
Washington Post: “Obama’s involvement in the redistricting fight is a reflection of the deep anxieties he harbors about Trump’s second term… It has propelled the ex-president into a more political and public-facing role than he once envisioned.”
“With his enduring popularity and the party still struggling to unite behind new leaders after losing the White House and Congress, no other Democrat commands his level of authority or reach.”
Former President Barack Obama ripped fellow Democrats over their messaging, the Washington Examiner reports.
Said Obama: “You can’t constantly lecture people without acknowledging that you’ve got some blind spots, too, and that life’s messy.”
He added: “I think this was a fault of some progressive language, was almost asserting a holier-than-thou superiority that’s not that different from what we used to joke about coming from the Right Moral Majority and a certain fundamentalism about how to think about stuff that I think was dangerous. You can’t just be a scold all the time.”
“Former President Barack Obama suggested on Tuesday that President Trump and his allies were using the assassination of the conservative activist Charlie Kirk to stoke division and silence debate about Mr. Kirk’s ideas,” the New York Times reports.
Said Obama: “When I hear not just our current president, but his aides, who have a history of calling political opponents ‘vermin,’ enemies who need to be ‘targeted,’ that speaks to a broader problem that we have right now, and something that we’re going to have to grapple with — all of us.”
“Drawing more of a contrast with Mr. Trump, he referred to his own presidency and to past Republican leaders he said had believed in unifying a fractious country.”
He added: “I think George W. Bush believed that. I believe that people who I ran against — I know John McCain believed it. I know Mitt Romney believed it. What I’m describing is not a Democratic value or Republican value. It is an American value. And I think at moments like this, when tensions are high, then part of the job of the president is to pull people together.”
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.
Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.
Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.
Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.
Goddard is the owner of Goddard Media LLC.