He expanded health access for millions with Obamacare and greenlighted the killing of Osama bin Laden, but former President Barack Obama and his team believe that his most consequential decision (and blunder) was not pushing back on “birther” charges.
According to his former spokesman, Jay Carney, ignoring charges pushed by former President Donald Trump and others played a big role in dividing America.
At a Bipartisan Policy Center event this week, Carney said that Obama and his communications team didn’t think the nation would take the charges that Obama was born overseas and was a Muslim seriously.
His surprising comments came during a panel discussion with several past White House top officials and after moderator Steve Scully, the former C-SPAN executive, asked each for what they thought was the most consequential decision for the presidents they served.
“My first choice was the decision that he and we together made that has been enormously consequential ever since, and it is, I think, in part, one of the factors that has caused some of the increased partisan rancor that we feel today — and that is that we did not take birtherism seriously,” said Carney.
“We did not believe that people were listening to those folks who are out there claiming that President Obama had not been born in the United States and that he wasn’t Christian until it was too late. And I know President Obama feels this way because we talked about it,” he added.
The comments, broken out by C-SPAN, provided an awkward moment during the event. Two people away from Carney sat former Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway.
“We did not take birtherism seriously. We did not believe that people were listening to those folks were out there claiming that Pres. Obama had not been born in United States and he wasn’t Christian until too late”
– Jay Carney asked @BPC_Bipartisan most consequential decision pic.twitter.com/dKMRYRf834
— Howard Mortman (@HowardMortman) April 21, 2022
Carney said that many continue to believe the birther charges pushed by Trump as far back as 2011.
“The polls still show the majority, significant majority of self-identified Republicans don’t believe President Obama was born in the United States, and a significant percentage of them believe he was a Muslim,” said Carney.
“Think about how corrosive that is to our politics, and think about the kind of partisanship that that kind of corrosive politics has contributed to what we see today. And that was consequential. That was a mistake. We should have taken it seriously. We shouldn’t have joked about it. And you know, perhaps it would have ended differently,” he added.
