There were “no scandals” during the Barack Obama presidency, says Don Lemon, the man who likes to say he hosts a show on the “facts first” network.
“Someone said, ‘My gosh, did you guys talk about Barack Obama this much?’” Lemon, who is himself no stranger to delusion and falsehoods, recalled Monday evening, referring to CNN’s nonstop, wall-to-wall coverage of President Trump’s every utterance and action.
He continued, saying, “We did [cover Obama] a lot in the beginning because he was the first black president, but there was no — there were no scandals.”
Nearly as embarrassing as Lemon’s assertion that there were “no scandals,” and that their early coverage was friendly and excited, is the fact that his remarks came as he bragged that Obama’s approval numbers are better than President Trump’s.
It is possible Lemon meant specifically that there were no scandals in the early days of the Obama presidency (debatable, considering that whole voter intimidation issue). But that the Obama era was scandal-free is just not true. Nor is it a one-off for the CNN anchor. He has repeated the nonsense claim before that the worst scandal of the Obama era was a tan suit. In fact, Lemon mentioned the damned tan suit specifically Monday evening as he praised the former president. The scandal-free Obama presidency line is clearly something Lemon believes.
But to do this requires either an act of extreme ignorance or willful delusion.
For the record, the Obama years were indeed plagued by several high-level scandals. Sorry to repeat myself, but I am going to keep reminding everyone of this, so long as short-sighted idiots keep claiming the mantle of sainthood for the previous administration. To deny the Obama scandals is to fundamentally misunderstand the rise of Trump.
During Obama’s two terms in office, for example, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives ran a “gunwalking” operation in which it lost track of 1,290 firearms from a total of 2,000 that it allowed to be purchased illegally. One such firearm was used later in the killing of Border Patrol agent Brian Terry. Several were used in other killings. In the subsequent congressional investigation, Attorney General Eric Holder was held in contempt by Congress.
Between 2008 and 2016, at least seven American citizens were killed by drone strikes. Of those seven, only one was targeted intentionally by the U.S. government for an extrajudicial killing.
During the Obama administration, the Internal Revenue Service was weaponized against conservative groups.
Obama’s Office of Personnel Management was hacked because of appointees’ negligence.
Obama’s secretary of state maintained a homebrew server in her bathroom so as to evade record-keeping laws and department procedures, placing classified information at risk and on the hard drive of a very active online pervert who could have been especially susceptible to hacking. (CNN even covered this, Don!)
The Justice Department spied on journalists’ phone activity, including their home phone activity, without notifying their editors. And Obama’s secretary of Veterans Affairs resigned in disgrace after it was revealed that an estimated 307,000 veterans died awaiting medical attention.
But other than all that, Lemon makes a great point.
Last week, Vanity Fair reported the New York Times is instructing its reporters to avoid appearing on certain partisan news programs. Lemon’s show is reportedly included in the Times’ newsroom-wide crackdown. Good call.
