With so much material from which to choose, it doesn’t take a lot of straw grasping to critique former President Barack Obama. But some people just can’t help themselves.
On Friday, former Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke tweeted two pictures side by side, juxtaposing an image of Obama crying with an image of President Trump giving a thumbs up. “OBAMA would have been found in a closet SOBBING if he had to deal with ESTABLISHMENT’S attacks. @realDonaldTrump has the metal to withstand,” he captioned the graphics.
Two points.
First, as CNN’s Jake Tapper noted, the picture of Obama used by Clarke in his tweet was taken in January 2016 as the former president reflected on the victims killed in the Sandy Hook shooting. Carlos Barria of Reuters snapped the image during Obama’s speech, during which he also pledged to take executive action on gun control.
I’m no proponent of liberal efforts to curb Second Amendment rights, but exploiting the grief of a man who had to comfort the parents of children slaughtered at an elementary school is classless and stupid. People with followings as signficant as Clarke’s should probably research the context of sensitive pictures before tossing them out onto the Internet.
But the argument central to Clarke’s attack on Obama was also wrong. Like him or not, Obama’s presidency was made possible only because he did, in fact, withstand the “ESTABLISHMENT’s attacks” in the form of the 2008 Democratic primary. Like in 2016, the party establishment largely supported Hillary Clinton’s candidacy and, as a young senator, Obama’s fight to win the nomination was an uphill battle against the powerful Clinton machine.
I’ll just conclude by saying this: From a spokesman and senior advisor to a high-profile pro-Trump super PAC, this was a bad tweet.
Emily Jashinsky is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.
