From the Kitchen Table: The Duffys - Making America Normal Again: How Obama's Pathologies Infected America

Episode Date: August 17, 2023

Sean and Rachel sit down with Journalist Lee Smith, as he discusses how former President Obama left a lasting impact on the United States Government, and why he feels President Obama has a lasting and profound effect on how Democrats form policy decisions in Washington. Lee explains how the former President shaped the Russia Collusion story during the 2016 Presidential Election and reveals why he believes Obama heavily influences how the Biden Administration is governed.  Follow Sean and Rachel on Twitter: @SeanDuffyWI & @RCamposDuffy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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BetMGM.com for terms and conditions. Must be 19 years of age or older to wager. Ontario only. Please play responsibly. If you have any questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. Hey everyone, welcome to From the Kitchen Table. I'm Sean Duffy along with my co-host for the podcast, my partner in life and my wife, Rachel Campos Duffy.

It is great to be back at the kitchen table. And we have someone as a guest today to help us unpack what everyone's talking about, which is Barack Obama. He's back on the scene. And we've invited Lee Smith to join us. Lee, first, before we start talking about Obama and your really fantastic article called Obama's January 5th Conspiracy, I just want to tell you, I subscribe to your writing and pay that annual fee. I think it's always worthwhile to hear what you have to say. So I'm really honored that you're joining us this morning. Oh, well, I'm really grateful for your support and honored you support me.

So thank you so much. And thank you for reading the piece. And thanks to you both for inviting me on the kitchen table today. So this piece is sort of based on another piece, which is based on a book that sort of got overlooked. The timing of of the book about Obama by David Garrow, you know, it sort of got lost in the shuffle with all the drama around Trump's election. But the point being made in the article by David Samuels or the interview with David Samuels and that author. And then in your piece is that the reason Obama matters is that he's still impacting our lives right now and the way our government is run.

And in fact, you say that he has that Barack Obama has a broken psyche and he wants America to mirror or be like that broken psyche. Why don't you help break that down for us a little bit? Okay. Well, let me, let me start off with the, you're right. My piece was based on, well, I was kind of spinning off and citing an interview at tablet magazine where I write regularly. And that excellent interview is by Tablet colleague and dear friend David Samuels. And I recommend it to your excellent audience. And a lot of people have been talking about it on social media, my understanding from friends in Washington, that it's making a lot of, it's making the rounds around there too. And so what David Samuels did was he interviewed David Garrow, who had written a biography of Barack Obama in 2017.

Now, Garrow won a Pulitzer Prize for his biography on Martin Luther King Jr. So this guy is a prestigious historian, prestigious biographer. And of course, he's he's a man of the left, which comes out in this interview with David Samuels. He is a man of the left. So when his biography of Obama came out in 2017, Rising Star, it was lost because there was a lot of chaos in America at the time, a lot of it caused by Barack Obama. But the central fact is this, that it was a biography from a man of the left that was critical of Obama. As we all know, the left does not like to hear a criticism of Obama coming from David Samuels went to Garrow, interviewed him, and it's a phenomenal, mind-blowing interview, and David Samuels has a great introductory essay, which, again, I really recommend your audience check out. It's really important.

It is. I was going to say, Lee, it's a fantastic piece. It's long. It's worth the read. What's getting a lot of attention is the sort of well some of the reasons getting attention is that there's like apparently some lost letters of a homosexual fantasy but uh that he had that he wrote to one of his girlfriends but that's really not what's most interesting about it what's most interesting about this interview is that, as you say, Obama never left the scene. And he is like a, I guess you could say, a shadow government. He's running a shadow government. I think that's an excellent way to put it. That's an excellent way to put it. I mean, one of the points that David Samuels makes in this piece, and he and I have spoken about before, is that Barack Obama is the first president

who stayed in Washington, D.C. since Woodrow Wilson, and Wilson couldn't leave because he had a debilitating stroke. So if you look, just if you were to assemble the facts here and look at the obvious things about Barack Obama that the press has ignored or covered up, including the fact that he stayed in Washington, it's really quite astonishing, right? So Barack Obama, I mean, I think it's a little more than a shadow government. I mean, I think that the pretty clear case to be made is that Joe Biden is that Joe Biden is, as I referred to in my piece, is the presidential avatar, right? I think there's actually a model now for the Democratic Party, something we can talk about later. But I think it's,

Biden presented a once in a lifetime opportunity for Democratic Party bosses, like in particular, Barack Obama. And that was is that they could do a whole bunch of different things, they were able to get away with a whole bunch of different, ever being held accountable. Now, we all know that accountability is not that important in Washington. No one is ever held responsible for failure. But this, again, was a historic opportunity. And so I think that's the crucial way to understand the Biden presidency. Barack Obama talked about the third term, presidency. Barack Obama talked about the third term, and I know a lot of people relegate that to the realm of conspiracy thinking. But if you look at the different policies of the Biden administration, you put that together with Barack Obama's role in Washington and put that together

with what everyone comments on, which is Joe Biden's cognitive decline, right? So we can't have two different realities in which Joe Biden can barely say a coherent sentence, and yet Joe Biden is actually the brains behind the Biden White House, right? Those two things don't go together. Either Joe Biden is cognitively declined, and someone else is running the show, or Joe Biden is faking it and he's a skillful artiste who's able to pretend that he can't speak actual sentences. But in fact, he's running a decisively thought out proxy war in Ukraine and other policies. So that's basically part of the case that my article lays out. Lee, that's a really good point.

I mean, you can't have it both ways. You can't be an old senile dance and this brilliant tactician. There's nothing brilliant about the Ukraine war, though. No, but I give the last credit, in the last two years, the kind of... Chaos. Well, no, whether it's with tailpipe regulation, oil and gas regulation, they've done a lot of things to destroy our economy to great effect. Yeah, you're right.

Is Joe Biden the one orchestrating that or is someone else pulling the strings behind the curtain? But I always find fascinating, and Rachel's been saying, Barack Obama is running the Joe Biden administration. She's said that a number of times. And I'm like, I guess I don't see it. And as I've read your article and the one before, you make the case that actually, yes, you have Biden officials coming into Barack Obama's home in and out. And it always begs the question, it's shocking to me, and it shouldn't be shocking, but where in the hell is the media? This is a fascinating story that you think the Washington, D.C. press would be interested in learning about. Just like you would say, wouldn't they be interested in who the actual Barack Obama is?

Who was he in his youth? Should we just take his word for who he was in his youth? Or should we interview people who knew him? And it seems like the press doesn't care or want to report on the shadow government that Obama was running or who he was in his past. This is a very interesting point. And I feel like I'm recommending a reading list here. But another article, David Samuels, that I talk about in my article, David wrote a piece in 2016. It was published in May 2016. It's probably the last piece of journalism that the New York Times will ever publish.

But it was about Ben Rhodes, who was Obama's Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic Communications. And what David Samuels does in that profile of Ben Rhodes is he explains how the Obama administration managed their communications infrastructure, in particular to sell the Iran nuclear deal. But if you look at what happened, how they got, how they put different pieces in place, you see that that communications architecture is still in place. So the point that I try to make is the press has always leaned to the left. My father, as a retired journalist, my grandfather's in the media. My great grandfather was was the printer at the New York Daily News. Right. He set the he set the linotype at the New York Daily News.

So my family has been in the media for many generations. And I can say with some authority, the media has always leaned to the left. That's the nature of the American media. Right. the left. That's the nature of the American media, right? But what we've seen since the Obama era is something very different from it just leaning to the left, right? David Garrow, as I said, the biographer of Obama leans to the left, but this is an honest reporter. He has political sympathies, but he goes out and he finds the facts and he puts them out there. What we're seeing in our media is very, very different. Obama, the Obama administration not only corrupted the media, they turned it into a platform to run information operations. And that's what Russiagate was. So the idea that

the people who used, the people who use leaks of classified intelligence in The Washington Post and The New York Times to prosecute a campaign against Donald Trump to destroy the Trump administration. The idea that those guys would then turn around and say, well, you know what? Here's an interesting story. Barack Obama is still in Washington. What the heck is that all about? That's weird. So we don't have a media like that anymore. Our prestige media organizations like The Post, like The Times, they're just different. They carry the same name brands, but it's a different thing. People are still doing it. Why is that, Lee? But Lee, why is that? Is it that Barack Obama and his political machine or his administration was able to make this weaponized government more effectively than other administrations had wanted to or could? Or is it that the media was just so enamored with this idea of this, you know, black president who sort of had all the elite credentials and could appeal to so many people? What is it? How did that happen? Why? I mean, you talk about people who have liberal sympathies in

the past in the media, but now they're allowing themselves to be used as part of the intelligence community and apparatus. Why did that happen under Barack Obama? What happened there? Well, there's a financial reason for this, and this story goes back a little ways before. It goes back basically to the advent of the internet. And I saw it happen working in the media in New York, the newspaper I was working at was America's first alternative weekly newspaper, the Village Voice. And the Voice, like the New York Times at the time, like the New York Post and the Daily News, the big advertising there was classified advertising. So when places like Craigslist came in, that destroyed the financial model of the media, right? Because

the news always breaks in the print press. And then, you know, places like 60 Minutes, they would go and they'd find a story with some staying power in wherever, Arkansas or Illinois, but it was always broken by the print press. So with the financial model of the print press broken, that started to chip away at the media. And that was very important. What happened under Barack Obama is something in addition to that, though. Rachel, you were talking about my piece before. The other point that I try to make is that if we put together the evidence, the important pieces of evidence, I think it's not just that Barack Obama is using Joe Biden as an avatar and he's actually calling the shots. But Barack Obama is a pathological figure. the shots. But Barack Obama is a pathological figure. What happened to the press, as happened with, I believe, to lots of the federal bureaucracies? I mean, again, the bureaucracies are mostly run by, historically run by liberals, right? That's just the way the world works,

for better or worse. But something happened under Barack Obama where it went pathological. With the Obama administration, I know this in particular about the national security beat. If you went against what Ben Rhodes was leaking on the national security beat, you wouldn't have access to the White House. So they tamed people. They shaped people like that. Now, a regular person is going to walk away and say, well, this is crazy. I'm going to do something else. The only people who would accept those kinds of conditions that here I am, I call myself a journalist, but in fact, I'm not calling powerful people to account.

I'm not telling actual stories. In fact, I'm serving powerful people and powerful people who may indeed be hurting the interests of the United States. I'm spreading lies. Exactly. So who are the kind of people who do that work, right? Pathological people. Barack Obama pathologized that system. This is what happens in pathological regimes. There's a process of negative selection where normal people are funneled out and the people who will do the work demanded by pathological superiors, by the core pathological regime, the only people who succeed are pathological people.

So that's what we're looking at with the press, right? Why do members of the press, why do people who have press branches and they're proud of that, where they say they're proud of speaking truth to power or whatever their mantra is these days, why are they actually enforcing lies told by billionaires? Gee, this doesn't make sense to me. What's this whole thing about climate change, this madness? Every day we see this thing and it doesn't make sense to me. What's this whole thing about climate change, this madness? Every day we see this thing and it doesn't make sense because here's John Kerry riding his private jet. Here's Barack Obama with two houses on oceanfront property. This climate change stuff doesn't make sense. And nonetheless, the press is pushing it every day. Why? Because that portion of the media, Why? Because that portion of the media, the mainstream media, has become pathological.

And that, I think, is a very troublesome thing. And that's the point that I try to make in the piece. If we're just talking about a deep state going after Donald Trump for the purpose of dividing the country, the deep state in that context is a somewhat comforting solution, The deep state in that context is a somewhat comforting solution because we can do something about it. It's going to be hard getting rid of thousands of people, but it can be done because it's a bureaucratic solution that lends itself to getting the right people in place and doing the right paperwork. But what if that's not the problem? The deep state is not the problem. What if the problem is a pathological regime? And that's, I'm afraid that's where we are right now. We'll have more of this conversation after this. Welcome to the oil business. Billy Bob Thornton, Demi Moore, and Jon Hamm star in a

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So you'd think if you had a liberal reporter enterprising who wanted to make a name for themselves, they would go out and do the beat. They would investigate stories. They would come out with a blockbuster news article. A lot of eyeballs would come on their piece for not just themselves as an author, but for their publication. The business model around driving news

seems like it would still be appealing. But why don't we have more reporters like that, that, again, are trying to make a name for themselves, get eyeballs, make money, as opposed to just following the leftist regime? Well, we do. And I mean, you know, they're in places like Substack, you know, I mean, Matt Taibbi, for instance, Barry Weiss. Barry Weiss, I used to work with at Tablet. Barry left the New York Times. You know, most people consider Barry more of a centrist than a leftist. I mean, one of the things that I found on social media reporting Russiagate is not only

that there are not only that Americans want real information, but I mean, the number of researchers, independent researchers on there. I mean, I mean, I'm so obliged to the work that they did. So Americans are not just hungry for information, but they're producing it as well. So there is there is room for that and are doing well. I mean, Rachel, I'm not producing as much as I'd like to be right now on my locals page because usually my pieces take pretty long. on my locals page, because usually my pieces take pretty long. But, you know, so a lot of people are looking to that for, you know, for, you know, for different venues, it's just not happening. And this, that's not, it's not really a tragedy. It's just not happening at the Washington Post or the

New York Times. Because, because of that model that were in which I put Craigslist at the center, something else has grown up around it. So what places like the New York Times and Washington Post now are, these are communications platforms for the regime, right? I mean, Jeff Bezos owns the Washington Post. Jeff Bezos doesn't need to make a profit there. But the Washington Post is a very important property for Jeff Bezos, right? I mean, this is Congress's hometown. I mean, to have a media sounding board in the middle of Washington, D.C. is very important. And this is one reason why the Washington Post was the central player in Russiagate, right? That's what a lot of people kind of overlooked that because we look at the goofy people like Rachel

Maddow or whatever. It's the Washington Post, formerly prestige American papers who are at the center of the campaign to destroy Donald Trump. And they still are. So that's what they do. They don't they don't do journalism anymore. They're platforms for information operations and very and very dangerous. for uh information operations and and very dang and very dangerous right so let's go back to obama's pathology so he never left dc as you said he's still there um he's surrounded by relatively new friends um his mommy figure i think valerie jared um susan rice eric holder people he he met in the early 2000s doesn't have like very deep long friendships we know he has um you know if you look at the love letters that were uncovered um by um the author of the book about barack obama uh garrot uh these are very weird love

letters that don't really seem to be about the woman they seem to be about the woman. They seem to be about, you know, talking about himself. So you talk about America being looking like the pathology or the psyche of the broken psyche of Barack Obama. Who is Barack Obama? How do we explain why he's in D.C., why he's not the community organizer he told us he was, why he's hanging out with billionaires on yachts, but at the same time has this deep desire to basically run the government, take revenge on Donald Trump. What's he up to? What's going on? Well, I think I want to lay this out because I know that's a pretty, pretty large claim to say that a former president is pathological. And so I think we need to look at different things that Barack Obama has done during his term or is continuing to do today. And that's where my evidence comes from. Look, the Iran nuclear deal, I've covered the Middle East for more than 20 years now. And so I was following the Iran nuclear deal very closely.

And I've written about it extensively. Unfortunately, I was following the Iran nuclear deal very closely. And I've written about it extensively. Unfortunately, I still have to write about it. But what people ask me all the time is, why is Obama so intent on getting a nuclear bomb to Iran? Because people understand that that's what the nuclear deal is. It's not meant to stop Iran from getting a bomb. It's meant to give it to them. And so I think that's a crucial fact. Why is Barack Obama intent on getting a nuclear bomb to a terror state that embodies anti-Semitism? I mean, that's the issue right there. It's an evidence of a pathology. It's crazy, right? There's no other way to explain it. I know that Obama deputies and I know that people have all sorts of language around it. But once you poke through that language, it's what I describe in the piece as an inversion of language. And you see this. We are living in the world in which Obama started inverting language, right? Gender affirming care. I mean, that's an inversion. That's an inversion of logic. That's not what it is. Right. Mutilists? I think people have been inverting language for a long time. But if you look at the results of this and you look at the causes and you see the different causes that Barack Obama has taken

charge of, right, like what he calls the disinformation industry, right? He went to the University of Chicago and Stanford as a rollout for the disinformation industry, right? He went to the University of Chicago and Stanford as a rollout for the disinformation industry to basically announce a funding is open. If you want money, if you want a job in this industry, the disinformation industry, getting disinformation off the internet, it's open. Come on, come on aboard. It's not just the intelligence community. It's also, we've got civil society, we've got universities, we've got big tech, everyone's coming on board. What is the disinformation industry? It's censorship. That's all it is, right? So it's the fact that Barack Obama has taken lead of so many of these things that are that that for which he has inverted language.

The biggest one, the biggest one I want that I want to note is Russiagate. We look as someone who's reported on Russiagate for so long, too long from my perspective. We at first when we found out, as we assumed, it was paid for by the Clinton campaign, right? But the fact is that it was Barack Obama's intelligence chiefs like John Brennan, James Comey, Andrew McCabe, James Clapper, who were running the show. We know that Obama signed off on it because we know that John Brennan told him what was happening. Why would I mean, it's unimaginable. Of course, politicians are always playing dirty against each other.

But why would a man leave evidence, right? Suggesting, suggesting he got the CIA to endorse that Donald Trump was a Russian spy. I mean, what that does to a nation. We've seen the results. We've seen what's happened to America since Barack Obama's CIA director stamped the president's imprimatur on Russiagate. It has driven the country to madness. And it has driven the country to madness. And so now after four years of or three years of Russiagate, you know, we come into COVID. And as we come out the other side, it's a fascinating place that we find ourselves where the guy that they have so demonized, people, I think, on the left think that Donald Trump is worse than Hitler, that now we're at a place where we're going to prosecute a former president on some pretty scantily clad charges and also charges that Mike Pence could be charged with and so too could Joe Biden. But they're trying to put Donald Trump away in prison for over 100 years. And I think it all starts – I think it goes back to Obama and this whole push that Donald Trump was evil. And you would think that that's just one ex-president or one president in the waning days of his presidency making one last political push.

But it has had real staying power and had affected the mindset of the American people through the media as well that Donald Trump has to be taken out at all costs. the media as well, that Donald Trump has to be taken out at all costs. And for me, as I was a former prosecutor, I spent nine years, Lee, in the House. We dealt with the Iran nuclear deal and were outraged by it. But it's interesting how far this has come and how the country has devolved and divided from the roots of what Barack Obama started. I think the point that Lee's making, too, is that the reason it has had the staying power that you talk about is that Barack Obama never left. And I think it's really interestingly what you said that he left pieces of evidence. So like, you know, when you hear of his crimes, like, you know, like when you hear about these, you know, serial killers and how they are so sick that they like to leave little mementos of their crimes. Is that what you mean?

Because that's kind of what I gathered. Yes. He wants people to know that he did it. Right. So that he can retain power so that people know he's still in charge. Well, part of it's to let people know that he's still in charge. But also part of it's just to let people know he did it.

Right. That, Hey, I, this is me. I did this. Right. I, I, I'm the one who's running the show. Yeah. And Sean, I just want to say quickly what you were saying about where we are

now, right? The efforts to put a former president and the front runner, the front runner of the opposition party in jail, right? People say that, well, it's Banana Republic, it's third world stuff. What are these regimes? Those regimes are pathological, right? So these are run by crazy, vicious people. So that's why I always like giving a little more detail on the Banana Republic, third world stuff. It's all accurate, right? Communists, it's all accurate, right? They're communists, the third world is banana republic. But fundamentally, what makes all these, what all these regimes share in common is that they're pathological. And that's where our regime is right now. That's where our ruling class is right now. That's where the oligarchy is right now. They're pathological, because only pathological regimes would do what they are doing to Donald Trump.

And Lee, I know you have to go in one second, but how do you how do you fix it? I know you touched on this. How do you how do you remedy the state we find ourselves in right now? I mean, I think the most important I mean, remedies, remedies a ways away. I mean, I think political remedy is secondary, right? I think the most important thing is we saw coming out of COVID, again, another pathological moment, is for people, I wouldn't say to turn inwards, but to do the fundamentally human things that we're supposed to be doing. Because we have to remind ourselves if we're surrounded by a pathological, if a pathological regime is calling the shots, we have to remember

that we are normal, right? And we, our loves and affections, we love normal people, our families and our communities, these are normal things. So the idea that we're going to, that we need to So the idea that we're going to that we need to cultivate normalcy. I know this sounds strange. I think you're right. I think you're right. Spot on over the target. Right. So we have to. That's the fundamental thing. I think political solutions will come of that. This is a resourceful. Americans are a resourceful and resilient people, right? Heroic people, heroic people going back to before the founding of the country. That will take care of itself as long as we hold on to our normalcy. And I mean, we're really at it here right now. All the different things that are going on, some of which we've spoken about, like COVID,

like the trans movement, again, to come back to the pathology the trans movement is the two plus two equals five phase yes this pathological regime right and started under obama because i still remember under obama in my little town in wisconsin lee um everyone just kind of scratching their head saying, why do we have to have a genderless bathroom? Because from Barack Obama's Department of Education, they were tying funds. So little rural towns that we lived in at that time were being forced to do things that made no sense to them. And didn't fit the values of the community.

And didn't fit the values of the community and caused all kinds of division and uproar where there was no i don't even think we had any trend and i bet now that town has a lot of trans kids um at that time didn't um it's just it's so interesting i think normalcy is what we want i think uncovering who barack obama really is and maybe tearing down some of the myth that he wrote about himself um and and and uncovering his crimes might help us get back to normal. That's why this story matters, right? Right. We shouldn't be afraid to say what's normal, what's abnormal, right? And look, people say it all the time. I'm sure you guys hear people

say it around you all the time. It's like, well, that seems crazy. Well, that's crazy. And guess what? It's crazy, right? And so that's why the important thing is to ground ourselves in the normal with loved ones, with the work we do, with the things that we read, with our church, our community. That's what's so important right now to go like, right, okay. We're not saying we're heroes. We're not saying we're heroes. We're just saying we're normal. And the things that seem bizarre and pathological are in fact bizarre and pathological. Unfortunately, it's happening to the United States. It's happened all around the world. And there are many, many people throughout history who have suffered very, very badly. And God willing, in our holding onto our normalcy, we will be able to fend off the

worst of it. Well, after reading your article, the article by your friend David Samuels, and I'm getting to that book by Garrow, bizarre and pathological definitely describes Obama. And I don't think we should have any problem stating that anymore after reading this. Lee, thanks so much for joining us. We're really grateful. Thanks to both of you for having me on the kitchen table. I really appreciate it. It's a real pleasure to talk. Likewise. It's nice to speak to a real journalist. Thank you so much and God bless. All right. God bless you guys too. Bye. We'll have more of this conversation after this.

guys too. Bye. We'll have more of this conversation after this. Help turn off hesitation, turn off doubt, turn off fears. With your support, the YMCA of Greater Toronto helps people turn off whatever's holding them back so they can let their potential shine. Help turn on confidence and connections and possibilities from youth shelters to job training, mental health counseling and beyond. The YMCA offers hundreds of programs that empower people to shine their brightest. See our charity's impact at ymcagta.org slash charity. Interesting conversation, wasn't it? Yeah, it was. that way until this series of articles, including Lee's, where, again, you think he's just kind of, I forgot, I actually forgot that he lives still in D.C. because you think of, you know,

his Martha's Vineyard place and he's out in Hawaii still and he's out on yachts. But it's a good point. He's still in D.C. He's still pulling the strings. And listen, I've heard you say for years that this is the third term of Barack Obama. I didn't really engage you in that because I wasn't like, yeah. But didn't you remember Obama had that interview where he said that was his dream? To be in the basement in his sweatpants pulling the strings? Yes. And that speaks to the pathology of both the media and Barack Obama. One, that Barack Obama would say what his dream was and tell us in advance. It's like that

serial killer who wants to let you know that he dropped his breadcrumbs and clues, but also the pathology of the media that never pulled on that string and noticed that he's in D.C. more than he is anywhere else, and that people from the White House, his old employees in his administration are coming back and forth. They never wanted to follow that story. And this guy that wrote the book, David Garrow said, I don't cover that story because that's not my beat. There's like a thousand reporters in D.C. who could cover that story of them coming in and out and why the Iran deal that, you know, coming in and out and why the Iran deal that, you know, that Lee was talking about that makes zero sense and obviously wasn't working and was a terrible idea, why Barack Obama keeps trying to

do it and why he's keeping it alive in this administration. I just think what I loved about this conversation, Sean, is it went beyond all the interesting things, like the little salacious things in the article, like Barack Obama is, you know, you know, having homosexual fantasies. Barack Obama, you know, was had some anti-Semitic, you know, things with his, you know, his ex-girlfriend said he had some anti-Semitic sentiments. There's some like salacious stuff about him. But what's really interesting that he says is the pathology of Barack Obama has infected our government

and our media and that's why everything seems so not normal to us anymore. So crazy, right. That infection, that cancer, that crazy is what we see every day. It connects all these dots for me. It's so abnormal. Even the Iran nuclear deal is again, it is a guarantee that

Iran gets a nuclear weapon. It's not that they don't get a weapon. It's a guarantee that they will eventually get one, which was why so many of us were so perplexed by why. Why is he doing this? We would do that with a country that had chance death to America. They hate us. We want them to have nukes. I mean, so it ties a little bit to the anti-Semitic things that his first girl, his first serious girlfriend talked about, talked about. So let me make it just to underscore the point of Barack Obama. I'm going to use an example from my own life and then an example that happened recently with Obama. Congress, if I went to an event with a local mayor and there's a crowd there, the crowd will gravitate towards me as opposed to the mayor. I'm a higher level official and they'll come to me more so than the mayor. But if I go to an event with the governor, people will gravitate away from me into the governor as a higher. Or if you're on an event with Trump. If I go to the next point, if I go to an event with Trump or a governor goes to an event with

Donald Trump, they'll gravitate towards President Trump and leave you kind of out in the wings of an event. And that's not that's just the way, again, power works. That's the way power works. And in a crowd, that's the way you see the flow of people towards the most powerful person in the room, which is usually the most interesting person in the room. Now, a year ago, there was an event at the White House where Donald Trump, I'm not Donald Trump, where Joe Biden was there with Barack Obama. There was a bunch of staffers in the room at this event. Both Obama and Biden spoke. And after the event, the cameras were still rolling and everybody in the room was gravitating towards Barack Obama. And then on the video, you saw Joe Biden kind of meandering. He was talking to the drapes. No joke. Meandering through the crowd. No one wanted to talk to him. And so if

you really thought that Joe Biden was the man in charge, the man with the power, there would be gravitation towards Joe Biden. But everyone in the room, the staffers, the people involved in that room, they understood the real power center was not Joe Biden. The power center, the man who was pulling the strings was Barack Obama. And again, when I watched that, that was interesting because I've seen that in my own political life in the way power works, in the way people gravitate right there. He had no one to talk to, Joe Biden did. No one. He was wandering aimlessly and talking to the drapes. It was so fascinating. And again, if Barack Obama cared about Joe Biden and is what I think is interesting, what Leah is talking about, the signaling to the rest of the people who sort of don't need orders, but just kind of know what to do because of who left, the media. I'm still in D.C. I'm still in charge. And that's the kind of thing that Barack Obama does.

By the way, in that article with Daniel Samuels, I wanted to run this by you, Sean, because I thought it was interesting. It says, Barack Obama is the first, this is from the interview with David Gary, says Barack Obama is the first U.S. president from the periphery of the empire, Barack Obama is the first U.S. president from the periphery of the empire. He's also the first president from the billionaire foundation NGO complex, which makes

him the perfect mediating figure between the progressive part of the party, the billionaires, and the security state. And the article kind of talks about how Obama comes from foundation land. Like he tries to put out this image like he was this community organizer. He never went back to Chicago or community organizing. He really feels most comfortable with rich, white, highly credentialed people, elites. And he kind of leverages his race and his ability to, he claims, to mediate between the little people and the elites who run the world. Well, if you're a little person, the foundation has money, access, a salary, right? And you can use that foundation for your purposes. But if you're looking at the world as a whole, there are tiny

players begging the billionaires for cash. So why would you sit in foundation land that's begging the billionaires? Why don't you just go hang with the billionaires yourself? And the billionaires love you. And he does. So you're able to... By the way, this is a toxic relationship with this groupthink that's happening amongst these powerful enterprises, along with intelligence, along with the deep state. It's pathological. It's exactly the right word. Here's what I found interesting. Listen, we on our podcast did not prep Lee to say this, but when we asked, because I always think it's important to talk about solutions.

What is the solution? Well, first, he's like, listen, you're not crazy. This is crazy, right? So you're not nuts. It's loco. But then he actually said what we talk about a lot. You have to go back to your own basics. You have to go back to normal. And the normal is what you have closest to you. It is your family. It is your close friends. It is your spouses. It is your church. It is those very simple things. And he talks about creating that normalcy around you, which I couldn't agree with more. And again, we're in a revolution. They've waged a revolution on this country.

And I think you have to start small. And it's not in- We need a counter-revolution. You have to play politics. That really does matter. But really, the counter-revolution starts in the home. It starts in the family. It starts in fixing your own schools.

It starts in your church. And from that, it grows into a movement that can take the country back with the principles that we hold so dear, which are our founding principles, our Bill of Rights, our Constitution, the rights given to us by God, not by man. And also by, as you said, not just acknowledging that what we're living in is not normal, but acknowledging which leaders are not normal and are trying to do things that are totally un-American and frankly unconstitutional, like Barack Obama. That's why I think this book coming, resurfacing, this article, Lee Smith's article, are so important. We need to actually, just like I think Fauci is sort of finally getting, I think, on some level, finally getting his comeuppance, finally being thrown off of his pedestal. I don't think we get back to normal. And I think what you're saying is true. We need to do it in our own lives. But we also need to take Barack Obama,

this pathological, lying, sort of no man's land guy off of this pedestal. I think it was interesting in the interview with Garrow, because he talked, Garrow interviewed MLK, also had to study a lot about, as a historian,

John F. Kennedy. And he said, you know, you look at Martin Luther King. He was, you know, he had lots of flaws, lots of personal flaws. In fact, it was Garrow who brought those flaws to the surface. But he said this was a man who knew who he was. And the reason he knew who he was and the reason he knew who he was and, and, and was loved and didn't have, um, uh, and, and understood what, what,

who, what his place in the world was in a healthy way was because of his family and his community and his church. He was super grounded by who he was and his friends that he surrounded himself during the peak of his popularity were the same people he knew since he was growing up as a kid. Same with JFK said, you know, JFK, surrounded himself during the peak of his popularity were the same people he knew since he was growing up as a kid. Same with JFK said, you know, JFK, they were grounded in their faith and their tradition, their identity as Irish Catholic Americans. And he had the same friends

and family around him from, you know, when he was a little boy all the way up until the end. from, you know, when he was a little boy all the way up until the end. And so it's interesting in this article, they talk about how Valerie Jarrett, Eric Holder, these are, he doesn't have any deep ties to anything. He didn't know his father. He barely knew his mother. He was always a lost soul. And this pathology that he has, and this is not Rachel talking.

This is coming from this guy who did this very deep analysis. He did this biography of Martin Luther King and came out, despite Martin Luther King's flaws and alcoholism and philandering, came out having more respect for MLK because of who he was as a person.

He did this book on Barack Obama and came out going, this guy is not, he literally says in the book, or in the interview, this is not a normal person. This is not a normal person.

This is somebody with very deep, damaged personality. And now, as you see, he's reflecting that damage onto our politics, onto our civic life in so many ways. Well, and it would be nice if we had a media that was, we have a senator from Illinois who's running for president. Usually the media will turn your life over. I just saw that from anyone who goes through, whether that's a presidency or if you're picked as the vice presidential candidate, they dig through your life and your contacts and your girlfriends

and your friends, your old teachers with a fine tooth comb. That never really happened with Barack Obama. They took his version of who Barack Obama was and just swallowed it hook, line, and sinker. They never went and looked themselves. And this is a book that they actually did go back and look and go, who was he? And frankly, when they looked, it's kind of disturbing. It would be nice if the media had told us that had done their job. And I think the media is, they're activists now. These are not reporters. These are not people who believe in finding the truth, telling you the story, the newspaper man, the newsman that wants to break stories. That's not them anymore. I mean, again, I think you do have some of these, like Lee Smith and others on Substack.

I do. I think the alternative media is growing. But the traditional outlets- Yes, MSM. Yeah, the New York Times, the Washington Post. CBS, NBC. Would do these stories because it was good business. And now they're not interested because they're believers. They're activists.

They're selling the message of this cancerous White House to the American people as opposed to keeping the cancerous White House in check. I thought it was interesting, too. I talked about sometimes we think it's all like this big conspiracy. It's just the natural flow of things, how people with integrity would self-select out of the mainstream media journalism club. Because basically you wouldn't get access and you wouldn't be able to get a story and you would be ostracized anyway, unless you told the narrative that the White House wanted you to tell. And so then those people sort of like,

they threw their hands up and like, I'm out of here. A lot of them ended up in these alternative media places like Matt, like Matt Taibbi and and Barry Weiss eventually, you know, got out of the New York Times and there are others like that. And there's people like Lee Smith, who was on the Russia, the Russia collusion story for such a long time. I also thought, Sean, and the importance of Russia collusion in all of this to the moment we're in right now. Because most Americans don't know that Russia collusion was false. Is that true? Yes. It was a fake story. Well, listen, a lot of people get their news from the left wing media and they don't cover the story. They covered for three years that Russia collusion happened. But when the story came out that actually was all fake and false and it was a concoction of our military, not our military, our intelligence state and our FBI and the Department of Justice in conjunction with Hillary Clinton, they never covered that story.

They never told their viewers what really happened. They didn't read the last chapter to them. They leave them believing that Russiagate, Donald Trump truly did collude with Russia. And so, again, that doesn't fit their narrative. That they got it wrong, which they knew they had it wrong at the time, to tell the truth is not the narrative. It's, no, no, we're here to still let our potential voters and viewers believe that Donald Trump did these horrible acts and sold the country out. All the while, there's a lot of evidence that Joe Biden sold the country out and they have no interest in looking at Hunter Biden's income, doing a forensic audit to see, did Joe Biden make any money off these

foreign deals while he was the vice president? They have no interest in finding that out because they know if they look, they know what they'll find, which is Joe Biden is corrupt. So listen, I think it's wonderful that we have still good reporters out there fascinated on this new development around who Barack Obama really is and his influence right now in the Joe Biden White House. It's important for all of us to know. The people who knew the Obamas back in the Chicago days say they're not surprised that Barack Obama has not returned to Chicago. They said he never was part of that community, that he kind of chose to be black. He had to make that decision in his,

in his days and doesn't have those roots, but that Michelle Obama does that. She truly is from that community. Truly knows who she is, that what surprises them is not Barack doing that, but that Michelle has gone along with the sort of hanging out with Beyonce and, you know, going on yachts, you know, with the, with the, you know, rich billionaires instead of returning to, um, to Chicago and to her roots. Like most

presidents do, they go back to their ranch or to their, to their home. They're, they're, they're hungry to be back to normalcy. But Barack Obama was not. In the article, I just want to leave with this. I think it's interesting. It says, I think future historians, this is the interview with Garrow, I think future historians are going to look

at the Obama presidency and see it as the moment when this new oligarchy merged with the Democrat Party and used the capacities when this new oligarchy merged with the Democrat Party and used the capacities of these new technologies and the power of this new class of people, the oligarchs and their servants, to create a new apparatus of social control. How far they can go with it and what the limits are, you see them testing it out every week or so. Yes, we do. That is such a great conclusion to what this is. This is why it

matters. This is the state we're in right now. And that's why I think it's important to uncover who Barack Obama is and be honest about the moment we're living in. No doubt about that. Well, this is a great conversation. I appreciate Lee Smith for joining us, unpacking Barack Obama, who he really is, impact on our politics and our culture still today, not for the better, but for the worse. Listen, thank you all for joining our podcast. If you like our podcast, you can rate, review, subscribe, wherever you get your podcasts. You can always find us at foxnewspodcast.com. We'd ask you to subscribe. You get a notice every time each podcast drop. We drop every Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. Until next time, thanks for joining us.

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