The Blaze Former President Barack Obama is being applauded by many on the left for leaving the political sidelines and jumping into the fray for the midterms, but others are criticizing his lack of historical honesty for comments he made about freedom of the press.
“You never heard me threaten to shut them down”
Obama appeared to lob thin-veiled critiques against the current president in a speech at the University of Illinois Friday.
“It shouldn’t be Democratic or Republican to say that we don’t threaten the freedom of the press because they say things or publish stories we don’t like,” Obama said to loud applause.
“I complained plenty about Fox News,” he continued, “but you never heard me threaten to shut them down, or call them ‘enemies of the people.’
“Under Obama, the DOJ and FBI spied on reporters…”
The former president was clearly criticizing Trump for his attacks on the media, but the comments were immediately undermined by those who remembered Obama’s own less vocal, but more legal, attacks.
“Did substantially increase leak prosecutions, however,” Maggie Haberman of the New York Times objected.
“Leak prosecutions were a big deal under Obama. It wasn’t a frontal attack, but it was a stealth one,” she added in a response to someone defending Obama.
CNN’s Kaitlan Collins responded with a quote from the New York Times summing up Obama’s actions against the freedom of the press.
“Under Obama, the DOJ and FBI spied on reporters by monitoring phone records, labeled one journalist an unindicted co-conspirator for simply doing reporting and issued subpoenas to others to try to force them to reveal their sources and testify,” the excerpt read." . . .
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