Did you catch Barack Obama's attack on President Trump last week?
It was his most conspicuous, inappropriate broadside against his successor since leaving office 20 months ago.
Did he need 20 months to come up with lies this big? Maybe.
First, he blamed Trump for what we see in America today – "the politics of division and resentment and paranoia." It's an accurate description of what we see in the country – from Democrats and their allies. It was an accurate description of the Obama presidency during which he sowed the seeds of today's "resistance" to the results of the 2016 election.
But the biggest, boldest lie was to follow.
"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. "I complained plenty about Fox News, but you never heard me threaten to shut them down, or call them 'enemies of the people.'"
No, Obama didn't threaten to shut down Fox or call them "enemies of the people." Instead, Obama Communications Director Anita Dunn told the New York Times in 2009, "We're going to treat them the way we would treat an opponent."
Obama had only one major network that actually reported on his administration. The others fawned over him.
President Trump faces a different kind of press altogether – one that is completely partisan and obnoxiously adversarial to anything and everything he does. And it's ridiculous to suggest Trump has ever suggested shutting any of the media down – even the fakest of the fake news.
What about Obama? Even Leonard Downie, the former executive editor of the Washington Post, wrote in 2013 that Obama's "war on leaks and other efforts to control information are the most aggressive I've seen since the Nixon administration."
In 2015, James Risen, then a reporter at the New York Times, called the Obama administration "the greatest enemy of press freedom in a generation."
In early 2017, during Obama's last days as president, the San Diego Union-Tribune Editorial Board echoed the criticism from Downie and Risen, calling the Obama's administration "the least transparent and the most antagonistic toward the media since the Nixon administration." In a nuanced analysis of his eight years, they wrote, "So much for Obama's promise to lead 'the most transparent administration in history.'"
After Obama's recent speeches, the San Diego paper expanded on its earlier assessment of the way the 44th president treated the press:
Obama's administration prosecuted three times as many cases targeting whistleblowers and leakers than all previous administrations combined. It said there was probable cause that a Fox News reporter was a "co-conspirator" in a plot against the U.S. government because of his attempts to gather information about North Korea's nuclear arsenal. It secretly scoured the phone records of nearly 100 Associated Press reporters and editors for two months, which an editorial in the New York Times characterized as "a fishing expedition for sources and an effort to frighten off whistleblowers." And in 2014, according to AP, the Obama administration broke its own record for censoring government files or refusing to provide files sought under the Freedom of Information Act.
By contrast, Trump faces an almost entirely hostile and adversarial press. It's not Trump who is paranoid, it's the media.
What I have been telling you for the last year or longer is that it is the political left that represents a threat to freedom of speech, freedom of the press and freedom of religion. It's obvious.
- Look how leftist colleges and universities universally shut down debate and dialogue. It's what they teach young people to do – the future of America.
- Look how the Democratic Party and its leftist friends at Google, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Apple and Amazon actually ban and censor viewpoints they disagree with – including Christian expression.
- Look how this leftist "Speech Code Cartel" targets the independent, alternative media for extinction by hiring extremists to set the terms of debate.
- And look at which party demands universal voting – by citizens and non-citizens alike.
The political left is at war with free speech, the free press, freedom of religion and even free and fair elections under the rule of law.
That's what we're up against at WND, where we have seen ourselves and our colleagues in the independent, alternative media blatantly targeted by the powerful institutions of the left – especially the "Speech Code Cartel."
And that's what all who believe in God, the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence are up against when it comes to the relentless, so-called "progressive" political left.
That's why we need your prayers and your financial support. We don't think President Trump should be expected to fight this fight alone!
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