Former President Barack Obama is now warning the American people about the danger that “disinformation” poses to the nation’s democracy, but one has to wonder just when exactly he’s going to call out his own side of the political aisle for perpetuating myths and outright lies about conservatives and other issues over the past eight years. There certainly are numerous examples for Obama to choose from.
On Tuesday, Obama took time out of his post-presidency schedule to explain via Twitter to the American people that, “In recent years, we’ve seen how quickly disinformation spreads, especially on social media.”
“This has created real challenges for our democracy,” he fretted.
In his infinite wisdom, and despite nobody asking, he told the American people, “Part of the reason it’s hard to bring about change is that we live in a media environment that elevates falsehoods as much as truths, and divides people as much as it brings them together.”
But, fear not fellow comrades, the Obama Presidential Foundation is “working to empower and equip emerging leaders to tackle issues like the spread of disinformation.”
Obama’s lectures became pretty passé quite some time ago, so it’s doubtful that anybody is even paying attention to his thoughts on the matter.
Regardless, for those who are keeping tabs on Obama, does anybody actually expect that the Obama Foundation will attempt to dispel pieces of “disinformation” like the belief amongst a number of progressives that Michael Brown was shot by Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson with his hands up in the air? Even columnists at The Washington Post understand that’s untrue, but it would appear that few others understand it never happened, as the phrase, “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot,” has been featured in BLM rallies throughout America. This occurs even five years after the fact that Obama’s own Justice Department reported that Brown was threatening Wilson when he was shot to death.
Or maybe Barry O. will let his buddy President Joe Biden know that Kyle Rittenhouse, a teenager accused of traveling across state lines to kill black people, is not a white supremacist. Biden heavily implied Rittenhouse was one in multiple advertisements while on the campaign trail in 2020, yet has not issued an apology for smearing an innocent American.
Will the 44th president address the myth that his successor colluded with the Russian government to get elected in 2016? Maybe Obama will beat Special Counsel John Durham to the punch by revealing the truth behind the phony Steele Dossier, the Clinton campaign’s role in the entire affair, and divulging details of who else was involved in what appears to be a cover-up and scandal involving allegations that were, as Congressman Jim Jordan (R-OH) said on Monday, “it was made up.”
At the very least, Obama could apologize to former Trump campaign advisor Carter Page for the fact that FBI agents made “serious errors” that allowed the FISA court to grant the DOJ permission to spy on Page.
Speaking of presidential elections, will Obama spend any of his time focusing on the fact that social media censored one of the biggest stories of the 2020 presidential cycle — Hunter Biden’s infamous laptop? Of course, the legacy media assisted in the effort to shield the public from the story that potentially implicates Hunter’s father in myriad scandals centered around Joe Biden’s time in office as vice president. Sure, press outlets now acknowledge that Hunter’s laptop is real, but in 2020, when they were bragging that 51 former intelligence officials said it bore the hallmarks of “Russian disinformation,” nobody seemed too keen on ensuring that they were reporting the truth.
The Obama Presidential Center has yet to actually be constructed. The logistics of it all have hit some snags on account of Obama allegedly strong-arming the people of the south side of Chicago to build the complex, despite concerns that it will lead to gentrification and jack up property rates.
This means Obama will have plenty of time to travel the country for more Netflix specials, but maybe he’ll also reflect on the fact that practically the entire legacy media and his ideological allies spent time slandering Nicholas Sandmann in 2019 over a totally bogus story that the MAGA hat-wearing teenager was bullying a Native American elder at a pro-life march.
Sandmann, of course, fought back and appears to have received a hefty settlement from various outlets in the process. It would be nice if Obama included that example as one way to fight disinformation and protect the truth, but we won’t hold our breath.
To his credit, Obama actually has apologized for at least one piece of “disinformation” that earned him “Lie of the Year” from Politifact in 2013. After millions of people lost their health insurance plans despite being told, “if you like you health care plan, you can keep your health care plan” by Obama himself, the commander-in-chief told the American people, “I am sorry that they are finding themselves in this situation based on assurances they got from me.”
Despite that one moment of humility, a report from The New York Times would indicate that none of the aforementioned pieces of “fake news” in this article were the catalyst for Obama having a change of heart about the role social media and false information plays in society. Based on the Times report, what got Obama to think differently was “Russia’s flood of propaganda on social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube to stir confusion and chaos in the 2016 presidential election.”
As The Daily Wire has reported, that “flood of information” went both ways, and considering that Russia spent roughly $300,000 on its efforts on Facebook, there is little to no evidence that it swayed the election one way or the other. For context, former Democratic candidate Mayor Mike Bloomberg spent $60 million on Facebook ads and was a monumental loser in the 2020 Democratic primary.
On Thursday, Obama will apparently be giving a speech on the way we “consume information” to share what he has learned after “sitting down with academics, researchers, industry leaders, and former regulators, and listening to young leaders” on the topic.
Instead of doing that, maybe he better sit down with his Democratic colleagues and members of the legacy media to reflect on their gigantic mistakes over the last 8 years or so listed in this article.
The views expressed in this piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.
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Source: Dailywire
