White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest had to defend President Obama this morning after charges of sexism were leveled against him for his use of Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s, D-Mass., first name and his characterization of her as “absolutely wrong” on the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
“Elizabeth is, you know, a politician like everybody else,” Obama told Yahoo News over the weekend.
Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, accused Obama of being disrespectful and said: “I think referring to her as [her] first name, when he might not have done that for a male senator, perhaps? … I think that the president has made this more personal than he needed to.”
National Organization for Women president Terry O’Neill went even further, calling Obama’s remarks “sexist,” and that the “clear subtext is that the little lady just doesn’t know what she’s talking about.”
On MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” this morning, Mika Brzezinski asked if Obama would have spoken of another senator the same way.
“I can give you all the references of the president referring to his former colleagues in the Senate by their first name,” replied Earnest. “And the fact is Senator Warren actually used to work for the president here in the administration. The president has a personal relationship with Senator Warren; it’s not surprising he would call her by her first name the same way he calls other senators by their first names.”
“There’s ample evidence of the president calling other senators by their first name,” replied Earnest.
“Is that all it was about — just calling by your first name? Because he called her by the first name he’s sexist?” asked Joe Scarborough.
“That’s what they said,” replied Earnest. “It seems hard to believe, doesn’t it?”
The accusations of “racism” and “sexism” flew thick and fast in the 2008 Democratic presidential campaign, when the Obama campaign accused Hillary’s campaign of the former, and then-rival Hillary Clinton accused Obama of the latter.
In fact just last year, on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” Hillary charged that the Obama campaign had asked her to criticize former vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin simply “for being a woman” and that:
“Beginning the process of working with then-Sen. Obama after I ended my campaign, we had an awkward but necessary meeting to clear the air on a couple of issues, and one of them was the sexism that — unfortunately — was present in that ’08 campaign.”
