Obama rips ‘carnival barker’ QAnon conspiracy theories

Former President Barack Obama is venting his frustrations with news outlets and social media as he promotes his first post-White House memoir, this time blaming them for creating conspiracy theory echo chambers.

Obama told the Atlantic he didn’t believe he would be able to defend himself against criticism over his association with Rev. Jeremiah Wright if some of his former pastor’s more controversial sermons resurfaced today. Wright’s speeches on terrorism and distrust in government almost derailed Obama’s 2008 presidential bid.

“Now you have a situation in which large swaths of the country genuinely believe that the Democratic Party is a front for a pedophile ring. This stuff takes root,” he said in an interview published Monday.

He then recounted a conversation with a volunteer on President-elect Joe Biden’s campaign in Philadelphia about how they were fielding questions about QAnon conspiracy theories from voters in low-income black communities.

“The fact is that there is still a large portion of the country that was taken in by a carnival barker,” he said.

Like in other interviews about the first installment of his two-part memoir, A Promised Land, Obama blamed congressional Republicans for legislative obstruction on Capitol Hill. He described his relationship with former House Speaker John Boehner as “perfectly good,” before dishing that he would “bad-mouth” many members of his caucus behind their backs.

“Mitch McConnell is not buddy-buddy with anyone,” he said of the Senate majority leader. “I’m enjoying reading now about how Joe Biden and Mitch have been friends for a long time. They’ve known each other for a long time.”

“The issue was that they found it politically advantageous to demonize me and the Democratic Party. This was amplified by media outlets like Fox News,” he added. “Their voters believed this, and over time, Republicans became so successful in their demonization that it became very difficult for them to compromise, or even be seen being friendly.”

In a separate interview with NPR, Obama offered some advice to Biden, whose election win has been challenged by President Trump’s lawyers in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, and Pennsylvania over issues such as extended voter deadlines and transparency while ballots were being counted.

He said his two-term vice president, a 36-year Delaware senator, knew “there is a way to reach out and not be a sap” if he wanted a Republican-controlled Senate to pass any of his initiatives.

“There’s a way of consistently offering the possibility of cooperation but recognizing that if Mitch McConnell or others are refusing to cooperate, at some point, you’ve got to take it to the court of public opinion,” he told NPR Monday.

He continued of his first two years in office, “I had an unwarranted faith that if we did the right thing and implemented good policies, then people would know. And we didn’t sell it hard enough.”

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