Obama: Left Attacks Media for Pointing out Inconvenient Facts

In an interview on CNN’s Axe Files podcast on Thursday, former President Barack Obama conceded that while he thinks some things get improperly labeled as “woke,” progressives do sometimes go after reporters for “asking questions that don’t fit the accepted narrative or are inconvenient for progressives” or for “pointing out facts that don’t fit the neat narrative” progressives want to push.

Obama said, “I think that we have tended, at times, on the progressive side to tip into kind of a scolding social etiquette police and virtue signaling whereby somebody doesn’t say something exactly the right way, even if we all know they kind of didn’t mean it in an offensive way, and suddenly you’ve got — partly because of social media — everybody jumping on them and saying, somehow, ‘Oh, you must be racist or sexist.’ I think there have been times where reporters are asking questions that don’t fit the accepted narrative or are inconvenient for progressives around certain issues and just by raising the question or pointing out facts that don’t fit the neat narrative, we’ll jump on them and say, ‘Why are you aiding those who are attacking us?’”

Fact check: what he’s referring to obliquely and politely is “cancel culture.” This is not merely “a kind of scolding social etiquette police” but the Left’s anti-free speech bullying tactic employed to demonize and destroy individuals who don’t conform to the woke narrative. It’s an unofficial scorched-earth policy that has destroyed political and cultural discourse in this country. His mild disapproval aside, Obama and his Party created it and continue to sanction it.