A forthcoming memoir by Obama confidant Ben Rhodes includes the startling admission that the 44th president’s inner circle should have seen Hillary Clinton’s 2016 loss coming – because President Trump was essentially using the Obama playbook to discredit her.
The New York Times published excerpts of the book, “The World As It Is,” which describes outgoing President Barack Obama’s shock and disbelief at Trump’s election victory.
But Rhodes also seems to acknowledge that Trump used some of the same lines of attack employed by Obama during the hard-fought 2008 presidential primary against Clinton – minus what Rhodes describes as the “racism and misogyny.”
“I couldn’t shake the feeling that I should have seen it coming,” Rhodes writes in the book. “Because when you distilled it, stripped out the racism and misogyny, we’d run against Hillary eight years ago with the same message Trump had used: She’s part of a corrupt establishment that can’t be trusted to bring change.”
Obama ran in 2008 as the “change” candidate, rallying an enthusiastic base to defeat Clinton in the primary and later GOP nominee John McCain. In 2016 as in 2008, Clinton entered the race as the establishment favorite, only to be sidelined by an insurgent political newcomer.
Despite that admission by Rhodes, the book describes how Obama was distraught at the outcome.
“What if we were wrong?” Obama reportedly asked aides, as he struggled to come to terms with Clinton’s defeat.
More at Fox News
Yes, you should have seen it coming. After all, with all the obstruction of justice the Obama administration was conducting, no one knew better than them how corrupt, crooked and vulnerable Hillary was.
No, you were just born in the wrong country. You should have taken your “hope and change” to someplace like Venezuela, Syria, Iran, Cuba or Russia where it could be appreciated and the results might somehow be better than the existing conditions.
There is definitive proof Obama KNEW the FBI was spying on Trump and had directed it. See, when liberals report they didn’t know about something dirty that was done, it ALWAYS means they were in it, right there on the ground floor, pushing it along.
Glad to hear Obama was distraught, though.
Another we owe to Obama Gun Salesman and Trump in the White House