Barack Obama

Jeffrey Fleishman, arts and film writer for the Los Angeles Times and its former Cairo bureau chief, waxed insufferably eloquent about the departing President Obama’s oratorical skills in a pandering panegyric: "Obama’s legislative legacy may be in jeopardy from President-elect Donald Trump, but the grace of his prose will endure....His sentences soothed and stung, coaxed and challenged, drawing…

There are predictable signs that after eight years of giving the problem inadequate attention and occasional ridicule, the business press has decided that federal budget deficits and the national debt are going to start to matter again. Gosh, I wonder why? The Associated Press's Christopher Rugaber was relatively subtle about it in a report on Uncle Sam's December and year-to-date budget deficits…

Is it hasta la vista, baby, for the venerable White House daily briefing for the media? Way back there in 1955 James Hagerty, the press secretary for President Dwight Eisenhower, came to the conclusion that admitting television cameras to presidential press conferences  Ike held in the Indian Treaty Room of the next-door to the White House Old Executive Office Building (now named for Eisenhower)…

President Obama’s farewell address wasn’t ominous enough, believes The Nation’s Walsh. “It didn’t quite rise to the present danger,” wrote Walsh late Tuesday night, not long after Obama left the stage in Chicago. “Generally, he directed his mild criticism at all of us, not at the white backlash that elected [Donald] Trump.” In fact, the speech “could have been delivered even if Hillary Clinton…

A week after filing a report focused on a "lifelong conservative" who supports ObamaCare and worries about losing health insurance if it is repealed, CNN medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta on Friday went in the other direction as he filed a report predominantly about the views of physicians who make a case against ObamaCare and complain that it has harmed the system. Although the segment,…

A Smithsonian Channel special calls President Obama the greatest orator in U.S. history. The Smithsonian Channel may lap the mainstream media in its adoration of outgoing President Barack Obama. The channel is set to debut The Obama Years: The Power of Words on Feb. 27. The new special will, according to the web site, honor “the greatest writer and orator the White House has ever known.”

CBS This Morning on Friday previewed Barack Obama’s “final network interview as Commander-in-Chief,” touting a clip in which journalist Steve Kroft hails the President’s restraint in criticizing Donald Trump. Kroft initially prodded, “You have to admit this is one of the strangest transitions in history.... Can [Trump] run an improvisational presidency?” 

Here we go again. A month ago, Robert Baer, a leading coddler of Iran who is an "Intelligence and Security Analyst" while pontificating at CNN, contended that alleged Russian interference in the U.S. presidential election meant that the nation needs "to vote again." Now The Hill has given space to Chris Edelson, an assistant professor of government in American University's School of Public…

Following a gushing report on Friday’s NBC Today about President Obama awarding Vice President Joe Biden with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, co-host Matt Lauer revealed that he was overtaken by emotion while watching the White House ceremony on Thursday: “So I'm glad there were no cameras in my apartment yesterday because I was just sitting there weeping....I just burst out crying when I saw…

The broadcast news networks barely even mentioned the latest significant overhaul of U.S. policy by the Obama Administration. For two decades, the United States has granted asylum to Cuban fleeing the Castro regime who make it to American soil, a policy known as “wet foot, dry foot.” Now, in his final days in office, President Obama has ended this policy, to applause from the Cuban government.…

Wednesday night on NBC’s The Tonight Show, host Jimmy Fallon had Michelle Obama on as his guest for one of her final television appearances as First Lady. Fallon is known for being very friendly towards his guests but his interview with Mrs. Obama was completely out of the ordinary in gushiness.

Tuesday's All Things Considered on NPR played up the long-term effect of the anti-ObamaCare "death panel" talking point and labeled this phrase "fake news." Don Gonyea let President Obama; Anita Dunn, his former communications director; and a talking head from the left-wing Center for American Progress decry the "dishonest" message from ObamaCare opponents and lament the "lasting negative effect…

Next Tuesday, three days before the current POTUS becomes an ex-POTUS, Jonathan Chait’s Audacity: How Barack Obama Defied His Critics and Created a Legacy That Will Prevail will be published. On Tuesday, New York magazine, where Chait is the chief political pundit, ran an excerpt from the book in which he claimed, “The truth is that Obama enacted careful, deep, and mostly popular solutions to a…

It’s been an especially somber season for celebrities. Goodbyes are always hard, but losing Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama within the span of two months was just devastating. Naturally, the President’s farewell address simply sent some stars over the edge with emotion.