Barack Obama was elected president, promising to take on corporate lobbyists.
Because much of the news media took Obama’s word for it, he kept peddling the story throughout his presidency.
PREEMPTIVE FACT CHECK ON OBAMA’S STATE OF THE UNION
So on the morning of Obama’s first State of the Union address, I wrote a preemptive fact check of the president.
“The following are the misleading statements about special interests that … I expect Obama to make during tonight’s address,” I wrote.
I predicted Obama would claim to have stopped the lobbying revolving door, and I pointed out that this was false:
“Obama’s administration includes dozens of former lobbyists, most notably: Deputy Defense Secretary William Lynn, a former Raytheon lobbyist; and Treasury Department Chief of Staff Mark Patterson, a former Goldman lobbyist. Also, former H&R Block CEO Mark Ernst came to the IRS where he was ‘co-leader’ in writing new regulations for tax preparers–regulations that H&R Block endorsed, and that will profit H&R Block.”
Sure enough, that night Obama claimed, “We’ve excluded lobbyists from policymaking jobs, or seats on federal boards and commissions.”
This was totally false. At least 40 former registered lobbyists populated senior jobs in the Obama administration, including Cabinet positions and CIA director. Plenty of other non-registered lobbyists were high up in Obama’s administration, too.
As I reported the next morning, “Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack was a lobbyist for the National Education Association in March of 2008 … [Obama put] Monsanto’s former top lobbyist Michael Taylor … in charge of food safety policy[.] And then there’s top agri-chemical lobbyist Isi Siddiqui, whom Obama tapped as a trade representative on agriculture.”
COUNTING ‘LIES’: THE NEW YORK TIMES’ COMPARISON OF OBAMA AND TRUMP SHOWS GLARING MEDIA BLIND SPOTS
The administration defended Obama’s claim on the grounds that he had excluded some lobbyists from some policymaking grounds.
This would be like me saying “I refused alcohol during Lent,” because of that one time I said no to a peach schnapps after four Jaegerbombs.
Yet the major left-leaning newspapers mostly ignored this whopper, and news media continued to believe Obama’s lie for nearly a decade.
