You weren’t expecting Obama to be Presidential and fade into the background, were you?
It seems like only a few months ago when big-name media outlets like WaPo were publishing pieces warning about political interference by someone who isn’t in office. Does anyone remember this headline from December 28, 2016?
Memo to Trump: There can be only one president at a time
Here’s how that piece began:
One of the hallmarks of our democratic system is its commitment to the peaceful transition of power. This practice comes with two important, linked corollaries that fall under the umbrella that there can be only one president at a time. The first is that the incoming president, especially in the arena of foreign policy, takes care not to trespass on the prerogatives of the incumbent. The second is that the outgoing president once departed, remains largely mute, giving his successor space to operate unimpeded by post-presidential back-seat carping.
President-elect Donald Trump must have missed this memo. Not bothering to wait for the constitutionally mandated handover, Trump has inserted himself into policymaking, from bullying U.S. manufacturers to barging into foreign affairs, including shaking up U.S.-China policy and intruding into the Obama administration’s dealings with Israel at the United Nations.
Well, WaPo and others didn’t mind using this principle to flame Trump. (Do they miss ANY opportunity to flame Trump, real or imagined?) But they have been strangely silent both on mounting evidence of intentional sabotage of the incoming administration’s agenda AND Obama’s very obvious inability to STFU.
Obama, who enjoyed the ongoing silence of his predecessor during his time in office — while he beat Dubya like a rented mule. Obama blamed each and every one of his failures, for years, on Bush.
But Obama can’t bear seeing his legacy — unconstitutional though it may have been — disappear into history’s ash heap.
He had no class while in office and has no grace now that he’s out of it.
Here’s what he’s been saying on one of his endless, lavish, one-percenter vacations:
The former US president was addressing a crowd in Jakarta, which is his childhood home, to open the Fourth Congress of Indonesian Diaspora on Saturday at the end of his 10-day family vacation.
‘In Paris, we came together around the most ambitious agreement in history about climate change, an agreement that even with the temporary absence of American leadership, can still give our children a fighting chance,’ Obama said.
Trump shocked many countries last month by announcing he was pulling out of the Paris climate agreement. — Daily Mail
The absence of leadership? Arguing against Democracy? Does Obama realize it’s himself he’s undercutting here?
“What we will see is more and more people arguing against democracy, we will see more and more people who are looking to restrict freedom of the press, and we’ll see more intolerance, more tribal divisions, more ethnic divisions, and religious divisions and more violence,” Obama said in a speech in Indonesia Saturday.
Just one problem exists with his rhetoric: there was nothing democratic about joining the Paris accord.
Obama joined the Paris accord in 2016, but did so unilaterally without getting advice and consent from the Senate as required by the U.S. Constitution. The Obama administration argued that the Paris accord wasn’t a treaty and didn’t need legislative approval.
The Obama administration wanted to avoid the Paris accord being struck down by a Republican-controlled Senate, so diplomats based the Paris accord on non-binding targets set by signatory nations. — Daily Caller
He did, however Praise Indonesia for its tolerance and good example of how different religions can coexist.
‘My time here made me cherish respect for people’s differences,’ he said.
He urged the country to be a light of democracy and to never stop embracing differences. Indonesia has faced a rise in Islamic radicalism and anti-gay attacks, and was recently condemned by rights groups for jailing Jakarta’s former governor, an ethnic Chinese Christian, for blasphemy.
‘The spirit of this country has to be one of tolerance. It’s enshrined in Indonesia’s constitution, it’s symbolized by mosques and temples and churches beside each other,’ Obama said. — Daily Mail
Did that say jailing a Christian for Blasphemy?
Oops. Well, I guess that explains a lot.
Then again, The Washington Times said Obama was basically ripping Trump for having ‘too much patriotism‘.
Nah, Obama, you ‘citizen of the world’.
Trump doesn’t have ‘too much’ patriotism — YOU just have too little.
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