As President Obama prepares to leave office, many liberals and progressives are still convinced that somehow the current president is something of a saint — after all, he was awarded a Nobel Prize, wasn’t he (before he bombed a hospital)? Didn’t Obama bring Hope and Change to the country?
Change — yes. But for the better? Not really, unless you’re lucky enough to belong to the country’s richest one percent. As for hope — well, let’s hope the presidency of Donald Trump goes better than the last eight years.
Here, as a reminder, are 10 scandals of the outgoing administration — proof that Obama’s record was far from unblemished when it came to wrongdoing.
- Obamacare
Of course, in first place is the number one scandal of the Obama administration — the Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as Obamacare. The fact that it’s called “The Affordable Care Act” is the biggest scandal of all, because the only people it’s affordable for are the wealthy, who are likely covered under their employers’ health plans; they’re not who Obamacare is intended for.
Obamacare was supposed to lower insurance premiums for the people who can least afford them, but in many cases, the premiums have skyrocketed, with only dubious government subsidies to partially contain the increases.
Failed insurance cooperatives, multiple insurers leaving the program and potential users paying the penalty for not signing up rather than enrolling are all proof (in addition to a malfunctioning $5 billion website) that Obamacare has been a disaster from Day 1. Here’s hoping incoming President Trump can get it repealed and replaced as quickly as possible.
- Benghazi/Libya
Obama and then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton sent Ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens into a lethal danger zone without ample security or a backup plan amidst known hostile elements gathered literally on the doorstep of the local U.S. Consulate.
Obama and Clinton spun a false story of a militia group’s provocation by propaganda to the media, to the family members of the four Americans killed that fateful night and to anyone else who was willing to listen, until the truth came out several weeks later.
But it was enough time for the Democrats to wrap up an election that saw Obama elected to a second presidential term while Hillary Clinton denied being at fault — despite 33,000 deleted emails — to Senate committee after Senate committee.
The entire decision to support insurgent groups instead of new American ally Muammar Gaddafi in the Arab Spring movement of 2011 proved to be a costly mistake — both for America and for Libyans as the North African country has since become overrun with ISIS soldiers and other hostile forces.
- Iran Nuclear Deal
The administration’s lies about Benghazi paled in comparison to the lies about its dealings with Iran. Obama’s foreign policy czar Ben Rhodes later admitted that the Obama administration had sold the media and the public a bill of goods when it told them that American negotiators had dealt with “moderates” in the Iranian government who could be trusted and that the U.S. still held the best cards in the deal.
Rhodes falsely boasted that American inspectors would be given 24/7, continuous access to the Iranian nuclear facilities among numerous other lies. Later, Obama arranged for the shipment of billions in cold, hard cash to Iran in exchange for the freedom of American hostages, but denied the payments were equivalent to “ransom.” The Iranian deal is the best evidence yet that Obama didn’t trust Congress to negotiate with foreign governments.
- Spending/False Employment Numbers
Liberal news-checking organization Politifact admits that under Obama, it’s “mostly true” that the nation’s debt doubled to $19.4 trillion; Obama added more to it than all previous presidential administrations combined.
A good chunk of that money was supposed to go to “stimulus spending,” but somehow created zero private-sector jobs. Instead, many, many GOVERNMENT jobs were created, and a network of Democratic Party slush funds was set up via union allies. At the same time, unemployment levels reached modern highs when considering all the people who have given up looking for work.
Obama crowed about the miracle recovery from the 2008 financial crisis; but the problem was his Bureau of Labor Statistics numbers were fudged — the jobs he created were part-time, paid poorly and were largely in the service economy.
- Eric Holder
Many people remember how Obama’s second Attorney General Loretta Lynch met former President Bill Clinton on her jet at Phoenix’s Sky Harbor International Airport to talk briefly about their respective “grandchildren.”
But some forget that Obama’s first Attorney General was even more ridden with scandals and ultimately was held in contempt of Congress — the first sitting member of a presidential cabinet in history to be awarded that distinction. Democrats supported Holder, but his record speaks for itself.
- Fast and Furious
Indeed, it was Holder’s impossible-to-believe claims of incompetence that did him in as regards the insane operation known as Fast & Furious, which put American guns into the hands of Mexican drug lords.
Breitbart News founder Andrew Breitbart claims that this was “for the purposes of creating a narrative they could use in America to try and thwart our Second Amendment constitutional rights.”
The official story was that the guns were to be used as bait to try to capture the drug lords. But it all went awry, and both Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agent Jamie Zapata and Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry were killed along the way, in addition to hundreds of Mexican citizens.
- IRS Targeting of Conservative Groups
The Democrats practiced the time-honored technique of deny-coverup-excuse when it came to the IRS’ admitted targeting of Tea Party and pro-life groups trying to claim tax-exempt status. The IRS had indeed delayed processing these groups’ applications until after the presidential election of 2012 while Congressional Democrats and Obama’s Justice Department made a mockery of investigating the affair. Needless to say, if Republicans had done the same thing to liberal groups, the Congressional hearings would likely still be going on!
- Solyndra
This poorly vetted solar energy venture was a premier example of the Obama administration’s awful business skills, and the company’s terrible business model was all but ignored as the government threw billions of dollars of good money after bad at this sorry idea for a company. The phrase “crony capitalism” gained much traction from this deal.
- Secret Service
The Secret Service suffered from a poor track record of their own during the administration of Obama, as one scandal after another plagued the agency, from revelations of prostitution solicitation in Columbia to drunk agents ramming their car into a White House security barrier in 2015.
And then there was the incident when a person who jumped the White House fence actually made it all the way into the White House (and plenty of the way inside) without being stopped. With “friends” like these, one wonders if Obama needed enemies.
- GSA Scandals
The General Services Administration (GSA) is supposed to manage and support basic functioning of many government departments. But that didn’t stop the agency from taking care of itself first and foremost with lavish parties and useless projects.
The GSA strongly resisted efforts to make it accountable to oversight, and media pundits wondered aloud what it took to actually be fired from the GSA. When the press sought proof of all the overspending through FOIA applications, Obama’s political operatives stymied the requests and stripped watchdog group Judicial Watch of its “media” status. It was just more politics as usual for the Democrats.
