{"id":37514,"date":"2018-09-08T12:37:51","date_gmt":"2018-09-08T17:37:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=37514"},"modified":"2018-09-08T12:37:51","modified_gmt":"2018-09-08T17:37:51","slug":"nyt-flashback-if-donald-trump-targets-journalists-thank-obama","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=37514","title":{"rendered":"NYT Flashback: “If Donald Trump Targets Journalists, Thank Obama”"},"content":{"rendered":"
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NYT Flashback: “If Donald Trump Targets Journalists, Thank Obama”<\/a><\/span><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n
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Former President Obama has come under fire for what many have viewed as a hypocritical condemnation of President Trump during a Friday acceptance speech for his Ethics in Government\u00a0<\/em>award at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.<\/p>\n

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In particular, critics are slamming Obama for his comments regarding Trump’s criticism of the press – while casually minimizing\u00a0his own actions against journalists and whistleblowers:<\/p>\n

It shouldn\u2019t be Democratic or Republican to say that we don\u2019t threaten the freedom of the press because they say things or publish stories we don\u2019t like<\/strong>. I complained plenty about Fox News, but you never heard me threaten to shut them down or call them enemies of the people<\/strong>. -Barack Obama<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Except Obama did much, much more than that…<\/p>\n

In addition to prosecuting more whistleblowers than all previous presidents combined, the Obama administration targeted then-Fox News journalist James Rosen as a “criminal co-conspirator” for protecting his sources in a DOJ\u00a0leak investigation.<\/p>\n

And while Obama’s defenders have attempted to downplay his actions, the overwhelming consensus appears to be that the former President is a massive hypocrite.<\/p>\n

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\u2714<\/b><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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\u201cI complained plenty about Fox News, but I never threatened to shut them down.\u201d
\nIt\u2019s probably a good\u00a0time to remind you that Obama used the Espionage Act to go after whistleblowers who leaked to journalists more than all previous presidents combined.<\/p>\n

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Worth noting, though, that the Obama Justice Department secretly designated a Fox News journalist, James Rosen, as a criminal co-conspirator.<\/p>\n

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\"\"Brian Stelter<\/strong>\u200fVerified account<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span>@brianstelter<\/b><\/span><\/a><\/p>\n
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More<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Obama telling the truth about his media criticism versus Trump’s criticism: “I complained plenty about Fox News, but you never heard me threaten to shut them down, or call them enemies of the people.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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Verified account<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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1:30 PM – 7 Sep 2018<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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NYT Flashback: “If Donald Trump Targets Journalists, Thank Obama” Former President Obama has come under fire for what many have viewed as a hypocritical condemnation of President Trump during a Friday acceptance speech for his Ethics in Government\u00a0award at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. In particular, critics are slamming Obama for his comments regarding […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[3306,7844,462,512,1921,938,4318],"class_list":["post-37514","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberty","tag-barack-obama","tag-donald-trump","tag-journalism","tag-media","tag-new-york-times","tag-press-freedom","tag-zerohedge"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37514","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=37514"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37514\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37515,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37514\/revisions\/37515"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=37514"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=37514"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=37514"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}