Archive for the ‘Obama’ Category

Obama talked trash, won money from 3 celebs over golf game – The Hill (blog)

Anthony Anderson says a trash-talking former President Obama raked it in recently after winning a golf bet against him, Chris Paul and Michael Phelps.

"President Obama talked trash all day. Five and a half hours, nothing but trash talk," Anderson told Jimmy Fallon during a Thursday appearance on NBC's "The Tonight Show."

The "Black-ish" star revealed he recently hit the links with Obama, Houston Rockets player Paul and Olympian Phelps.

"He won," Anderson, 46, said of the ex-commander in chief. Praising Obama's golf game, the actor said: "He's a great golfer. Doesn't hit the ball long off the tee, but he's straight as an arrow."

Former first lady Michelle ObamaMichelle ObamaFormer Michelle Obama aide enters Maryland governor's race Will Smith: Obama said I 'have the ears' to play him in a movie Knicks hire Michelle Obamas brother: report MORE has previously spoken of her husband's penchant for some putting-time trash talk. During an appearance on "Ellen" last year, sheadvised NBA star Stephen Curry that he shouldn't stay silent on the golf course with her spouse.

"You should trash talk back, Steph," shesaid. "Talk about his ears. If you're putting, you wanna say, 'The shadow from your ears is really messing up my putt.' Try that one."

Anderson claimed that after winning the game, Obama, 56, made sure his golf buddies coughed up some cold, hard cash.

"He took $700 from Phelps, he took $600 from Chris Paul, he took $300 from me," Anderson said to laughs. "I was like, man, is this even right? I was like, you're the president, here. Can you take money from civilians?"

Anderson said Obama replied: "Anthony, I'm a civilian now. So yes, I can take it."

"He talked trash all day," said Anderson. "And took all of our money."

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Obama talked trash, won money from 3 celebs over golf game - The Hill (blog)

Obama Plans On Stepping Back Into National Spotlight – The Daily Caller

Former President Barack Obama plans to resurface on to the national scene this fall, albeit slowly, according to The Hill.

In the next few weeks, Obama and his staff will strategize a way allowing him to be part of the political conversation, while not making him the loudest voice in the party.

Aides say his role is to be more behind the scenes than anything else, in terms of fundraising for example, as opposed to a front man.

The Hill notes Obama has already given advice to the party since its devastating 2016 presidential loss, and he met with Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez last July.

However, Obamas re-emergence to the national scene, described as a delicate dance, may not be completely welcomed and could backfire.

Past presidents traditionally leave Washington and do not involve themselves in the national political scene, often opting to involve themselves in charity work and speaking engagements.

However, President Obamas younger age, as opposed to most former presidents, as well as his history of a political community organizing sets him up to continue work for the Democrats for years to come. His renewed public presence could reenergize Republicans and conservatives who feel Trump is not being treated fairly by the media.

He has to be careful, Julian Zelizer, a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University told The Hill. At a moment when President Trumps approval is falling so fastincluding with his basethere is a risk for Obama taking center stage and triggering the energy that many Republicans currently lack.

President Obama could begin his journey in the public eye by campaigning for Democrat Ralph Northams run for Virginia governor. (RELATED: Obama Going Back To Campaigning Months After Leaving Office)

David Turner, a campaign spokesman for the Northam camp, told The Washington Post last June that Obama promised to campaign for Northman in the state that the former president won in 2008 and 2012.

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Obama Plans On Stepping Back Into National Spotlight - The Daily Caller

200 days in: Obama still on Trump’s mind – CNN

"What's your judgment as to the chances they'll fire these things off?" Kennedy asked Dwight Eisenhower, a retired Army general whom he'd once derided as a "cold bastard."

Now, as North Korea presents fresh nuclear danger, those types of consultations appear to be history.

President Donald Trump, six months into his presidency and facing simmering tensions in Asia, has not only ignored his predecessors, he's rekindled his deep-seeded animosity for the man who handed him the nuclear codes.

This week, as Pyongyang issued threats to launch missiles at Guam, Trump retweeted a series of messages that criticized Obama, including an unscientific Twitter poll that had been inactive for days.

"Who is a better President of the United States," the poll asked, using the hashtag #ObamaDay to note that the state of Illinois will now mark August 4, the former president's birthday, as Barack Obama Day.

Trump also retweeted two messages on Wednesday evening, one from a Fox News show and another from John Bolton, a former ambassador to the United Nations, that knocked Obama.

Their spat is conducted from afar; Trump has not spoken with Obama since the pair parted ways on January 20. Before that, their face-to-face conversations were limited to a meeting in the Oval Office and pleasantries over coffee ahead of Trump's swearing-in.

Trump's tussles this week with an increasingly hostile North Korea only serve as a reminder of those brief conversations with Obama. In the Oval Office the week he won, Obama warned North Korea would present Trump with his gravest global challenge. Trump later suggested he and Obama discussed the matter further during a shared limousine ride from the White House to the US Capitol on Inauguration Day.

It was the last time they spoke.

"This President has a very unusual obsession with his predecessor and constantly comparing himself to President Obama," Derek Chollet, former assistant defense secretary under Obama. "This is not a president who seems to be singularly focused on what is a genuinely a global security threat in North Korea."

"I think he has got to be shaking his head," Chollet said of the former president. "Clearly, he tried in raising this issue with President Trump by singling it out in their meeting in the Oval Office last year."

Speaking from his golf club here on Thursday, Trump maligned Obama's stance on North Korea, suggesting Obama had ignored an issue that he is intent on confronting.

"You look what happened with Obama. Obama -- he didn't even want to talk about it. But I talk," Trump said on the steps of his clubhouse. "It's about time. Somebody has to do it. Somebody has to do it."

Much of Trump's initial governing agenda has focused on reversing Obama's legacy, either on climate change or trade or diplomatic relations with Cuba.

Trump has grown frustrated in areas he hasn't been able to separate himself from his predecessor, according to a senior administration official. He's lashed out at his national security council for presenting strategies in Afghanistan and against ISIS that aren't markedly different from the previous administration's. When his team insisted he re-certify Iran's compliance with the multi-nation nuclear deal, Trump balked and took the disagreement public.

Obama, it seems, is never far from Trump's mind, at least based on his public comments and his statements on Twitter.

"I inherited a mess," Trump said in February during the only solo press conference of his presidency. "It's a mess. At home and abroad, a mess."

Abroad, too, Trump has slammed Obama.

Standing next to Polish President Andrzej Duda, Trump blamed Obama for Russia's meddling in the 2016 election, saying that he did nothing to counter their attempt to help Trump and damage Clinton.

"Barack Obama, when he was president, found out about this, in terms of whether it was Russia, found out about it in August," Trump said. "Now the election was in November. That's a lot of time. He did nothing about it."

Trump's disdain for Obama, according to those close to him, was cemented when the then-President took aim at the reality TV star during the 2011 White House Correspondents' Dinner, mocking Trump as a conspiracy theorist whose most consequential decisions are whether to fire people on his TV show.

Omarosa Manigault, a former contestant on NBC's "The Apprentice," Trump's reality show, told PBS in 2016 that she thought at that time that Obama was "starting something that I don't know if he'll be able to finish" by publicly slamming Trump during that event.

Manigault, now a White House aide, said "every critic, every detractor, will have to bow down to President Trump" when he wins.

"It's everyone who's ever doubted Donald, who ever disagreed, who ever challenged him," she said. "It is the ultimate revenge to become the most powerful man in the universe."

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200 days in: Obama still on Trump's mind - CNN

Susan Rice concedes Obama-era strategy to curtail North Korea’s nuclear program was a ‘failure’ – Washington Examiner

Obama national security adviser Susan Rice said Thursday that the U.S. has consistently failed to curtail North Korea's nuclear ambitions, even during the Obama era.

"You can call it a failure," Rice told CNN. "I accept that characterization of the efforts of the United States over the last two decades."

Rice, who served as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations for eight years before transitioning to the role of national security adviser, said the Democratic People's Republic of Korea has now vexed four successive American administrations, both Democrat and Republican. She said each administration has tried a range of measures, from sanctions and pressure, cooperation with China, and "other methods that we shouldn't speak about on television," to no avail.

"The fact of the matter is, that despite all of those efforts, the North Korean regime has been able to succeed in progressing with its program, both nuclear and missile," Rice said. "That's a very unfortunate outcome. But we are where we are. And we now need to decide how to proceed."

Rice advocated in a Thursday morning opinion piece in the New York Times that President Trump should tamp down his rhetoric and learn to live with a nuclear North Korea.

"History shows that we can, if we must, tolerate nuclear weapons in North Korea the same way we tolerated the far greater threat of thousands of Soviet nuclear weapons during the Cold War," she wrote. "It will require being pragmatic."

Trump has retweeted views on Twitter that argue former President Barack Obama is to blame for the current escalated tensions with Kim Jong-Un and the perception that the U.S. is vulnerable to a nuclear attack.

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Susan Rice concedes Obama-era strategy to curtail North Korea's nuclear program was a 'failure' - Washington Examiner

Trump Nominee Was an Obama Birther – New York Magazine

Ad will collapse in seconds CLOSE August 10, 2017 08/10/2017 1:49 pm By Adam K. Raymond Share

On the surface, Sam Clovis doesnt seem like an obvious choice to serve as the Department of Agricultures chief scientist. For starters, hes not a scientist. Hes not a farmer, either. Other than vocal support from the agriculture industry, he has no clear qualifications for the job. But Clovis is a loyal Trump supporter, perhaps the quality the president prizes above all. And thanks to CNN, we now know he has another quality Trump surely appreciates a deep animosity for President Obama and a history of peddling the same conspiracy theories that turned Trump into a conservative darling.

Cloviss lack of qualifications is not news. Democrats and climate groups have been grousing about that, along with his climate-change skepticism, since Trump sent his nomination to the Capitol. But Cloviss birtherism was revealed only Thursday, when CNN dug deep into his days as an Iowa talk-radio host and blogger.

In one blog post, Clovis wrote, For over a decade, Obama allowed his publisher to carry a biography that had him born in Kenya.Only after beginning his pursuit of public office did he correct the entry. He goes on to call Obama a lying egoist.

Along with his questioning President Obamas place of birth, CNN found that the former fighter pilot and defense contractor had called former attorney general Eric Holder a racist bigot and a racist black. He also called former Labor secretary Tom Perez a racist Latino. But Obama was the target of most of his barbs.

Clovis is not the first Trump nominee who has beat the birther drum. Attorney John Bush was also criticized for pushing the conspiracy in blog posts, but that didnt prevent the Senate from confirming him to a lifetime appointment to the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals.

Clovis also trashed Obama on his radio program Serious Civics With Sam Clovis. In one 2012 episode, he said Obama appeared to be happy about the attack in Benghazi. This is something that tells you that he is dismissive of the entire affair and, in fact, I would even hate to stretch this out, but its almost as if it was intentional. As if he is happy that these things have occurred, Clovis said.

In another blog post, Clovis called Obama a dangerous person and wrote that he wants to be a dictator and he wants to enslave all who are not part of his regime. Clovis also wrote that if Obama won reelection in 2012 it could very well mean the total deconstruction of our Constitutional republic. Fortunately, it did not. Unfortunately, that might still be on the way.

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Trump Nominee Was an Obama Birther - New York Magazine