#News Barack Obama got onstage and claimed he would have never thrown Fox News out of the White House the way President Donald Trump has banned CNN, Politico, and MS Now… Listen.
“Imagine if I had pulled Fox News’ credentials from the WH press corps. You’re laughing but this is what’s happening.”
“It’s unimaginable that the same parties that are silent right now would have tolerated a behavior like that from me.”
#obama
Obama insinuating that he never restricted or tried to restrict press access during his presidency, however, critics say he is not telling the truth.
Some examples include:
🔷️Tried to freeze Fox News out from White House interviews
🔷️Spied on and tried to prosecute a journalist who published a sourced story while calling him a ‘co-conspirator’
🔷️Prosecuted more leakers than any other president in history and
🔷️Replaced independent photojournalists (essentially banned them) with ️government photographs
🔥Fast Facts:🔥
🔺️October 22, 2009:
➡️The Treasury Department arranged on-camera interviews with “pay czar” Kenneth Feinberg for the White House television pool.
➡️Fox News was left off the list. Internal emails later obtained by Judicial Watch show White House broadcast director Dag Vega writing Treasury, “we’d prefer if you skip Fox please.”
➡️Other networks refused to participate unless Fox was included.
➡️White House communications director Anita Dunn had already gone on CNN’s Reliable Sources and said Fox “really is not a news network at this point” and operated as “the research arm or the communications arm of the Republican Party.”
➡️Obama himself told NBC that the network operated “basically as a talk radio format and not a news organization” and he was “not losing a lot of sleep over” it.
🔺️June 11, 2009: Fox News chief Washington correspondent James Rosen reported on news, sourced by State Department contractor Stephen Jin-Woo Kim.
🔺️May 2010: Obama’s FBI obtained a sealed search warrant for two days of Rosen’s personal Gmail.
➡️The warrant sought records about Rosen’s “state of mind.”
➡️Agents used State Department badge data to track his visits, seized Fox News phone records, and obtained records tied to a number matching his parents’ home phone.
➡️ Attorney General Eric Holder personally approved the warrant. Obama’s Justice Department fought for years to keep it secret.
🔺️May 2013: The documents became public. CBS News reported:
“For the first time ever, a presidential administration is treating news reporting like a crime and a reporter like a criminal suspect.”
“The level of government surveillance over a reporter was unprecedented” and that
“No presidential administration, not even the Nixon administration, went after reporters with search warrants and secret surveillance.”
🔺️May 2013: The Obama Justice Department secretly obtained two months of records for 20 Associated Press phone lines used by more than 100 journalists in Washington, New York, and Hartford.
➡️The AP called it a “massive and unprecedented intrusion.”
➡️Obama said he made “no apologies” for his investigations
🔺️November 21, 2013 – Photographers were banned from the White House, after which the White House released government official photos on Flickr and Twitter.
➡️Journalists claimed the White House was “replacing independent photojournalism with visual press releases.”
Events included
🔷️Obama’s July 10, 2013, meeting with the Congressional Hispanic Caucus;
🔷️July 29 lunch with Hillary Clinton;
🔷️July 30 meeting with Israeli and Palestinian negotiators; and
🔷️October 11 meeting with Malala Yousafzai.
🔷️Photographers were also kept out of the 2009 do-over of the oath of office and meetings with the Dalai Lama.
🔷️AP photography director Santiago Lyon called the practice “Orwellian image control” and “propaganda.”
🔷️USA Today announced it would stop publishing most White House handout photos.
🔺️October 10, 2013: Washington Post executive editor Leonard Downie Jr. wrote that Obama’s “war on leaks and other efforts to control information are the most aggressive I’ve seen since the Nixon administration.”
➡️New York Times chief Washington correspondent David E. Sanger said, “This is the most closed, control freak administration I’ve ever covered.”
➡️CBS’s Bob Schieffer said, “and this administration exercises more control than George W. Bush’s did.”
➡️The report counted more Espionage Act leak prosecutions under Obama than under all prior presidents combined
➡️The administration set records for denying or heavily redacting FOIA requests.
➡️Transparency groups documented Obama’s Justice Department quietly working against FOIA reform bills.
➡️Eliminated independent photojournalist to distribute government photos in their place.
So does this make what Obama did unimaginable? Or are we still pretending that everything he says is true?
