Former President Barack Obama will return to the White House on Tuesday for the first time since leaving office to promote the Affordable Care Act in an event alongside President Joe Biden, NBC News reports.
GOP Lawmaker Claims Trump ‘Caught’ Osama Bin Laden
Rep. Lisa McClain (R-MI) falsely claimed that Donald Trump “caught” Osama bin Laden while he was president, USA Today reports.
“Trump was a private citizen in 2011, when President Barack Obama authorized the mission that killed bin Laden, the al-Qaida leader and architect of the 9/11 attacks on the United States.”
Russia’s Aggression in 2015 Shaped Biden’s Actions
“The former diplomats and defense officials who visited the U.S. Naval Observatory in early 2015 were seeking a receptive audience — and they found one in Vice President Joe Biden. Russia had taken over the Ukrainian territory of Crimea the previous year and fueled a bloody separatist uprising in the country’s east, and the officials urgently wanted President Barack Obama to send Ukraine advanced antitank missiles, called Javelins,” the Washington Post reports.
“Sure enough, Obama rejected the request, fearing that providing lethal aid to Ukraine would escalate tensions with Russia.”
“Now Biden, as president, is finally doing what he could not do then. He has provided Ukraine with more than $2 billion in security assistance since the start of his administration, including small arms, body armor and other munitions — including, of course, Javelins.”
Photos to Prove It
After Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-TX) tweeted that President Biden was “not all mentally there” and “brain dead,” former White House photographer Pete Souza responded:
“Hey Ronny, I didn’t know you were a liar when you sat next to me in the spare limousine, but I could tell you were often hung over on foreign trips. I have photos in the archive to prove it (since we preserved all Presidential records).”
Obama to Speak to House Democrats
Former President Barack Obama will speak to the House Democratic caucus on Thursday, NBC News reports.
The private meeting is organized by Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), the caucus chair, and is expected to take place virtually.
Obama Wouldn’t Have Been President Without Harry Reid
Former President Barack Obama said in a statement that he wouldn’t be president were it not for the late Sen. Harry Reid’s “encouragement and support.”
He added in a letter to Reid shortly before his death: “I wouldn’t have got most of what I got done without your skill and determination.”
Bezos Donates $100 Million to the Obama Foundation
Jeff Bezos has given $100 million to the Obama Foundation, Puck reports.
“The gift, the largest single donation ever made to the Foundation, has no restrictions on its use. But it is very common, and increasingly controversial, for major donors to be granted some naming honor in return for a donation of that size, be it a Sackler wing of The Louvre or a Koch theater at Lincoln Center. In this instance, though, Bezos asked for the public plaza near the center to be named the John Lewis Plaza, after the late congressman and civil rights icon — part of an intentional strategy, the foundation said, to ‘change the paradigm around naming.'”
Obama to Break Ground on Presidential Library
Former President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama officially break ground on their Obama Presidential Center on Tuesday with construction in Chicago’s historic Jackson Park actually kicking off in August, the Chicago Sun Times reports.
Obama Cancels His Birthday Party
“The party plans had been months in the making and many invitees had already arrived on Martha’s Vineyard when former President Barack Obama belatedly announced he was canceling his huge 60th birthday bash scheduled for Saturday,” the New York Times reports.
Said an Obama spokeswoman: “Due to the new spread of the Delta variant over the past week, the President and Mrs. Obama have decided to significantly scale back the event to include only family and close friends. He’s appreciative of others sending their birthday wishes from afar and looks forward to seeing people soon.”
Activists Delay Opening of Obama Library
“Former President Barack Obama, once a community organizer, has gotten a taste of community organizing himself as preservationists and other activists have slowed the construction of his presidential center,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“The Ronald Reagan Presidential Library welcomed visitors just more than 1,000 days after Mr. Reagan’s last day in office. Bill Clinton’s took 1,398 days.”
“It is likely the Obama center will open more than 3,100 days after the 44th president left the White House.”
Obama Once Compared Trump to O.J. Simpson
“Barack Obama once mordantly quipped that Donald Trump’s appeal to white Americans was similar to the way Black Americans showed support for O.J. Simpson during his 1990s murder trial and subsequent acquittal, according to a new book by a former aide,” People magazine reports.
Said Obama: “Trump is for a lot of white people what O.J.’s acquittal was to a lot of Black folks—you know it’s wrong, but it feels good.”
Bonus Quote of the Day
“Motherfuckers, I’m aloof with you because I don’t want to talk to you.”
— Barack Obama, quoted by Insider, about reporters who saw him as “aloof.”
From the new book, Battle for the Soul: Inside the Democrats’ Campaigns to Defeat Trump by Edward-Isaac Dovere.
What Separates Biden from Obama and Clinton
Ronald Brownstein: “Both of the earlier administrations tended to view widening inequality as a kind of natural phenomenon—the inevitable result of structural changes in the economy, led by greater automation and more global economic competition.”
“The Biden team views inequality much more as something molded by human hands—the result of policies that have weakened workers and strengthened corporations’ marketplace leverage. To a greater degree than Obama’s and especially Clinton’s teams, it believes that generating widely shared prosperity isn’t possible without aggressive government intervention.”
Quote of the Day
“I operate off the proposition that if Obama had not been, ‘We’re not going to look back, we’re only going to look forward,’ the Trumpsters would have been a lot less bold about doing the reckless damage that they did.”
— Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), quoted by the New Republic, on why the Biden administration should be doing more to investigate past actions by the Trump administration.
Americans See Biden as More Moderate Than Obama
A new NBC News poll released finds that 44% of registered voters see President Joe Biden as “very” or “somewhat” liberal, while 42% see him as “moderate.”
In contrast, in April 2009, the NBC News poll found that 59% of registered voters saw Barack Obama as “very” or “somewhat” liberal, while 30% saw him as moderate.
How Obama’s Eight Years Shaped Biden’s First 100 Days
NBC News: “Both presidents inherited a crisis-ravaged economy, but their signature 100-day achievements look markedly different: Biden’s stimulus plan was about 2½ times the size of President Barack Obama’s. It was easy for voters to understand, centered on popular $1,400 cash payments for most people, while Obama’s stimulus program was criticized as being too small and complicated, delivering small-dollar benefits in paychecks that polls showed many people didn’t even notice.”
“While Obama pared back his stimulus to win Republican votes, Biden met with Republicans once before he opted for a special process to go it alone. While conservative deficit hawks reined in Obama, Biden has brushed them off, arguing that now is the time to spend big. While Obama was hesitant to brag about his achievements, Biden’s team regularly takes credit for the receding pandemic — and voters give him high marks.”
CNN: How Biden anchored his first 100 days on two simple principles.
Obama Cabinet Official Took Undisclosed Foreign Cash
“Former U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood took $50,000 from an associate of a Lebanese-Nigerian billionaire at the center of a sprawling scheme of illegal foreign campaign contributions,” Axios reports.
“LaHood, a former Republican congressman from Illinois and a member of President Obama’s Cabinet, agreed to repay the money, pay a $40,000 fine and cooperate with prosecutors to settle the matter.”
The Biden Do-Over
Washington Post: “The opening months of the Biden administration have provided the Democratic Party with a rare ‘do-over’ — a chance to enact wide-ranging agenda items far more quickly and on a larger scale than in 2009. Even Biden’s slogan, Build Back Better, aspires to improve what came before.”
“Surrounded by many of the same top aides who worked in the Obama White House, the Biden team is behaving almost as if it is back to work after a lengthy sabbatical, picking up where Obama left off without having to ascend a learning curve.”
“The Donald Trump era offered Democrats a view of their worst nightmare — a president that most of them saw as authoritarian and dangerous to the country’s future. Bound by that fear, Democrats say they are attempting to undo what many both inside and outside the administration view as the mistakes and disappointments from the Obama years.”
- « Previous Page
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- …
- 10
- Next Page »