r/politics • u/Quirkie The Netherlands • 1d ago

Soft Paywall Obama Breaks Silence on Trump’s ‘Unimaginable’ Presidency - “Imagine if I had done any of this,” the former two-term president said.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/obama-breaks-silence-on-trumps-unimaginable-presidency/
73.6k Upvotes

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u/jtsa5 1d ago

If anyone else other than Trump did anything wrong it was like the world was ending. When it's Trump everyone has kid gloves on.

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u/RemarkableWave8066 1d ago

Obama wore a tan suit once and the Fox News goons had aneurysms for a solid week

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u/Raoul_Duke9 1d ago

You guys remember "terrorist fist jab"? That one was the one that pissed me off the most.

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u/gatsby712 1d ago

Remember that time Bush got us into two wars because of 9/11, but it wasn’t until Obama that the guy who caused it was killed. I member. Turns out the Republicans didn’t care about justice, they just cared about using the crisis to make some oil money for their VP and President. 

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u/old_and_boring_guy Tennessee 1d ago

The part that bothered me was that the first thing Obama did was put the war money in the budget (as opposed to special appropriations) and everyone suddenly cared what the war cost.

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u/mockg 1d ago edited 1d ago

Are you sure that is just not republicans and the right wing news being themselves. I swear the only times I hear about budget from them is if a democrat president is in charge.

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u/EE_Tim 1d ago

It's called the Two Santas Strategy and it's by design.

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u/Kind_Dream_610 1d ago

Are you sure you spelled that correctly, shouldn't it really be called the "Two Satans Strategy" because it's nothing but self-serving evil that affects not just America, but the world.

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u/EE_Tim 1d ago

Potato, potatoe

(Sorry, Dan)

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u/RanaMisteria 1d ago

Remember when a Republican politician’s career could be ended by misspelling the name of a vegetable in front of a bunch of school children?

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u/RatManForgiveYou 20h ago

Remember when Republicans didn't talk about the rest of Americans as if we're the enemy? When they didn't hate Democrats so much that they'd be willing to support an enemy dictatorship? When they didn't have an entire propaganda network devoted to manipulation? When they actually seemed to care about what they claim to believe and value?

Now they never do the right thing, hypocrisy is the norm, they ignore their own beliefs when convenient (like supporting Trump and his disgusting treatment of McCain and veterans), they put their support behind things simply to "own the libs", and they have absolutely zero shame.

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u/P1xelHunter78 Ohio 14h ago

Barely. They started talking about liberals as the enemy right after 9/11 when people started questioning the wars.

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u/bellboy905 10h ago

They started well before 9/11.

As head of GOPAC, Newt Gingrich encouraged GOP candidates to use combative language that drew a stark contrast between Republicans and Democrats as a means of attracting media attention. It was so effective that within 15 years, the red-blue divide had become the narrative framework for discussing American politics.

https://theamericanleader.org/timeline-event/language-a-key-mechanism-of-control/

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u/RanaMisteria 12h ago

I do. It feels like a lifetime ago.

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u/EE_Tim 1d ago

Such simpler times, when one would pick between two, differing solutions to objective problems, rather than between sane politics and speedrunning fascism.

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u/GwenChaos29 18h ago

Pepperidge Farms remembers

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u/thefoxsaysredrum 23h ago

I bet Dan is super salty about that, watching this shit show.

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u/EE_Tim 23h ago

I imagine him sitting in a recliner, mouth agape as he watches the ever-changing news of Trump over a 24 hour period and occasionally muttering to himself, "it was just an 'e' not this!"

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u/TheBoNix 19h ago

This a Quail reference?

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u/thefoxsaysredrum 19h ago

Yup.

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u/TheBoNix 18h ago

Sorry, watched the Rockies lose in 11 innings, in the freezing cold. My brain is a popsicle still.

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u/[deleted] 1d ago edited 1d ago

[deleted]

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u/EE_Tim 1d ago

I think there's a definite nefariousness that comes from the fact that it is a concerted effort on their part, separate from the historical proof of it in action.

People are idiots if they fall for that.

People are idiots, that's why we are where we are as a nation.

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u/GiftToTheUniverse 1d ago

There's been a vested interest working overtime to dumb us down for the past 50+ years.

People who are long dead started this offensive against us. And for what? What did they get out of it?

This system is cancer.

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u/Professor-Woo 21h ago

That is the thing. For the right, power is its own end. It is not to govern or make America better. It is to maintain their own power.

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u/carz4us 15h ago

And mix in racism and sexism to seal the deal

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u/EE_Tim 9h ago

I've been assured from conservatives that racism was solved in the 60s. Please ignore the LA riots, the Watts riots, the Miami riots, the BLM protests, the Charleston United the Right etc. etc.

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u/Kind_Dream_610 1d ago

People ARE idiots who DO fall for it. They don't look at the data, they listen to the sound bites, and their current idol spewing lies. They don't care about cause and effect, they care about if they win (even if they can't see when they're really losing, because they never actually lose, it's stolen from them by those who the idol tells them is to blame for all their woes).

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u/slowpoke2013 1d ago

No kidding. Enter the people who are feeling the pain and all they have to say is “they’re hurting the wrong people!”

FFS. Beyond hope.

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u/RanaMisteria 1d ago edited 13h ago

They don’t have to be stupid to fall for it. All the GOP has to do is flood the zone. If their politicians, and their economists, and their media, and their etc. are all saying the same thing over and over then it starts to look like they know what they’re talking about because surely if it was all nonsense then someone would say so? And that’s all they need because they’ve already laid such solid groundwork to ensure that their voters don’t trust any other source of information but those sanctioned by the party. People aren’t stupid for being brainwashed. The GOP has been at this for decades. They have slowly pushed their voters boundaries to get them to accept more and more extreme, illegal, immoral, authoritarian, and anti-constitutional crap. Some GOP voters are not smart it’s true, and some are bigots and would be fully on board with everything even if the party were honest, but most of them are mostly good people who genuinely buy the lies. They have been radicalised. They’re in a cult. Yes, their choices are still their own, but it’s a bit like being in an abusive relationship. You think you have no choice when really, you can always just walk away. But abusers and cults both like to boil the frog so to speak, and by the time people realise what’s happening the water is already boiling and you’re stuck. Or you feel stuck. Or you think “well, I’m already covered in 3rd degree burns and I’ve come this far and my whole family hates me I might as well stick it out to the bitter end.” Which is the sunk cost fallacy. Or you think things will get better or….

All I’m saying is that yeah, it’s dumb, and yeah, its wrong, and yeah, people who decide they’re okay with their party being full of and run by Nazis are, at the very least, Nazi sympathisers and so automatically wrong in all ways at all times period. But people who are in a cult need to feel like there’s a way back to reality, otherwise even if they realise they have been duped and controlled, they won’t feel like they have a choice but to stay in the cult. Because one day this will end, and we will have to figure out how to put ourselves back together.

By all means, fight fascism with everything you have, but don’t lose sight of each other’s humanity.

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u/PlushladyC 16h ago

Well said . Its been a huge campaign of manipulation .

Im not from USA - just a few monthes back I finally had the realisation that your country is as deeply brainwashed as China or any of the other nations that previously would have been denounced by your government .

And just calling everyone dumb is not going to help come back together as a Nation going forward

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u/RanaMisteria 12h ago

I live in the UK now and we have the same problem here. It’s just subtler. And more class driven. But we have a current Labour government saying they’re going to be reducing how much money is given in PIP (personal independence payments) for disabled people and they’re going to make it harder to qualify for disability benefits and PIP in the future. PIP is already hard to get, and the process to apply is notoriously dehumanising. When I first moved here we had a Labour government and social services and the NHS and local government were all providing far more services and social safety net programmes than they do now. But almost 15 years of Tory “austerity” has stripped those services and programmes so much that many of them don’t exist anymore. They began to privatise the NHS bit by bit because they see how much money it makes people in the US and as they’re the ones who own the concerns that would benefit, well, they wanted what the US had. It’s a mess. They basically did the UK Two Santas. The Two Father Christmases Strategy. And now what’s happening? Labour is saying they’re going to have to cut back on more social safety net spending to fix the problem. It’s a mess everywhere.

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u/PlushladyC 16h ago

Well said . Its been a huge campaign of manipulation .

Im not from USA - just a few monthes back I finally had the realisation that your country is as deeply brainwashed as China or any of the other nations that previously would have been denounced by your government .

And just calling everyone dumb is not going to help come back together as a Nation going forward

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u/RachelMcAdamsWart I voted 1d ago

People are idiots

Many, too many, are.

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u/WellbecauseIcan 1d ago

Thanks for the link stranger. Comments like that is one reason I like reddit.

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u/spiff-o-matic Minnesota 1d ago

This article needs more exposure.

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u/slowpoke2013 1d ago

Exactly this.

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u/EntertainmentEqual84 1d ago

Thanks for the article. Some other really great links like the Doom Loop for Democracy, written in 2022.

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u/Used_Carpenter2947 23h ago

Thank you for that link, incredibly educational and utterly infuriating.

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u/GiveMeAnOption 1d ago

Good find! Thanks

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u/Recent_Tap_9467 23h ago

Excellent article.

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u/John-A 18h ago

But isn't Trumps cuts combined with tariffs almost certain to unintentionally reverse Republican propaganda then?

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u/EE_Tim 17h ago

No, those tax cuts are revenue, so GOP cutting taxes increases the debt tremendously (like last time)

The Senate’s budget plan allows for extending the tax cuts under a scoring method that treats them as not adding to future deficits, even though a new estimate from the Joint Committee on Taxation projects they will add $5.5 trillion over the next decade when including interest, and $4.6 trillion not including interest.[source]

It's exactly in line with the Two Santas Strategy: spend frivolously when in power, rail against spending when not.

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u/John-A 16h ago

Yes, I understand that but Trump and DOGE are now cutting spending on Dem bellweathers while still cutting taxes.

Not only giving up all pretext of not being Grinches but also cutting massive numbers of federal workers AND now Trump gloating about killing the entire stock market.

My point is the old con depends on playing off both sides because it's impossible to BE BOTH sides, except Trump is dropping turds in that punch bowl as well now.

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u/EE_Tim 9h ago

I'd argue it's trying to be both Santas at once, but this is uncharted territory for conservatives - they've never tried dismantling the government this way as there wasn't a cult surrounding a singular person (Reagan got the closest). Rightwing media has implanted the idea that any government is bad and any spending by the government is bad. In that way, the dismantling of the government is a gift and the tax cuts are a gift. Once Democrats take control, they will rail against the government not working and the debt again.

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u/Economy_Sky3832 16h ago

I'm not reading all that

​In his article, Thom Hartmann discusses the "Two Santa Clauses" strategy, a political tactic formulated by Republican strategist Jude Wanniski in 1976. This strategy advises Republicans to act as "Santa Claus" by implementing tax cuts and increasing spending when in power, thereby stimulating the economy and gaining public favor. Conversely, when Democrats hold the presidency, Republicans should emphasize concerns about the national debt and advocate for spending cuts, pressuring Democrats to reduce social programs and potentially lose voter support. Hartmann argues that this approach has been employed over the past four decades to manipulate economic perceptions and influence electoral outcomes.

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u/Economy_Sky3832 16h ago

I'm not reading all that

​In his article, Thom Hartmann discusses the "Two Santa Clauses" strategy, a political tactic formulated by Republican strategist Jude Wanniski in 1976. This strategy advises Republicans to act as "Santa Claus" by implementing tax cuts and increasing spending when in power, thereby stimulating the economy and gaining public favor. Conversely, when Democrats hold the presidency, Republicans should emphasize concerns about the national debt and advocate for spending cuts, pressuring Democrats to reduce social programs and potentially lose voter support. Hartmann argues that this approach has been employed over the past four decades to manipulate economic perceptions and influence electoral outcomes.

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u/old_and_boring_guy Tennessee 1d ago

Oh, I agree. But that was a huge talking point for them: look at the Bush budget and the Obama budget! And if you didn’t know the Iraq war had not been included in any of the previous budgets, it was persuasive.

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u/CaptainMurphy1908 1d ago

That's because that is literally the only time you hear about it.