Former President Barack Obama issued a blistering rebuke of what he portrayed as certain tyrannical actions of President Donald Trump during a conversation with Hamilton College President Steven Tepper on Thursday.
Taking in an American political landscape where the President is curtailing the mainstream media’s access to the White House, accusing it of being too liberal, and where some of the country’s most prestigious law firms (linked to cases against him) are capitulating to executive office threats and pledging tens of millions to remain in the government’s good graces, Obama asked the crowd to imagine another president doing the same.
Specifically, to imagine him doing it: “Imagine if I had done any of this,” Obama said, chuckling a little at the imagined reaction. “Imagine if I had pulled Fox News’ credentials from the White House press corps.”
The crowd responded with laugher at the improbability of such a scenario, but that laughter drew pushback from the 44th President. “You’re laughing,” he said, “But this is what’s happening.”
Obama continued: “Imagine if I had said to law firms that were representing parties that were upset with policies my administration had initiated, that you will not be allowed into government buildings. We will punish you economically for dissenting from the Affordable Care Act. Or the Iran deal.”
Obama: Imagine if I had done any of this. Imagine if I had pulled Fox News’ credentials from the White House press corps. Imagine if I had said to law firms that were representing parties that were upset with policies my administration had initiated, that you will not be allowed… pic.twitter.com/htecKDCbyi
— Acyn (@Acyn) April 4, 2025
Contemplating the likely reaction — had he pursued a path similar to that of Trump 2.0 — Obama concluded that it is “unimaginable that the same parties that are silent now would have tolerated behavior like that from me, or a whole bunch of my predecessors.”
NOTE: Obama detractors responded with stories about his own antipathy to Fox News during his presidency, and an alleged threat to remove Fox from the first row of the White House briefing room in 2009.
Obama DID try to pull Fox News from White House coverage. In 2009. He also tried to stop them from getting a front seat in the White House briefing room.
— Jim Stinson (@jimstinson) April 5, 2025
Yet even on X, a highly Trump-friendly environment run by Elon Musk, Obama finds many who agree that the conduct standards are applied randomly and too often only when politically convenient. The commenter below encapsulates that kind of reaction, writing “President Obama is absolutely right to call out the brazen double standards corroding the integrity of American politics.”
President Obama is absolutely right to call out the brazen double standards corroding the integrity of American politics. The current crop of Republican leaders, many of whom wrapped themselves in the Constitution when it suited their agenda, are now silent as fundamental…
— Wesley Baker (@WesleyJBaker) April 5, 2025