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All Obama's Scandals That Didn't Embarrass Him

Barack Obama
Getty Images
February 28, 2018

These days Barack Obama is apparently delivering speeches at "major sports analytics" conferences. But he never misses an opportunity to display his hubris.

"We didn't have a scandal that embarrassed us," Obama said of his eight years in office. "I know that seems like a low bar. Generally speaking, you didn't hear about a lot of drama inside our White House."

Certainly Obama wasn't embarrassed that his IRS targeted his political opponents. Or that his Justice Department lost track of guns it was running in Mexico, which were used to kill a U.S. Border Patrol agent.

It's not embarrassing for taxpayers to be on the hook for $535 million in loan guarantees that went to a solar boondoggle, which happened to be connected to one of your major bundlers. It's not embarrassing to spend $150 million on a website that didn't work.

It's not embarrassing that thousands of veterans died waiting for care due to incompetence at the Department of Veterans Affairs.

It's not embarrassing to send your national security adviser out on all the Sunday shows to lie that a terrorist attack was based on a video to avoid political complications before the 2012 election, because maybe al Qaeda wasn't "on the run" after all.

It's not embarrassing to exchange five Guantánamo Bay detainees for deserter Beau Bergdahl or say that he "served with honor and distinction." It's not embarrassing for detainees you released from Gitmo to return to the battlefield.

Nor is it embarrassing to thank Iran for holding 10 U.S. sailors at gunpoint. Or to send billions in secret payments to Iran in pursuit of the nuclear deal. Or to have that cash now being traced to Iran-backed terrorists. Or letting Hezbollah off the hook, in pursuit of the nuclear deal.

Obama wasn't embarrassed to let Bashar al-Assad cross his red line in Syria by using chemical weapons against his people, again in pursuit of a nuclear deal with Syria's ally Iran.

It's not embarrassing to use taxpayer-funding to meddle in the election of an ally. It's not embarrassing to spy on that ally—and members of Congress—again, I'm sensing a theme here, in pursuit of that nuclear deal.

Finally, it's not embarrassing to choke and allow Russia to attack the "very core of our democracy" on your watch.

But, hey, at least no one called anyone a moron. (Well, just a monster.)

Published under: Barack Obama