Obama's Scandals

From Matt Walsh at The Blaze --

As far as we know right now, the only real criminals here are the intelligence officials who’ve been leaking classified information from clandestinely recorded telephone conversations to the media in hopes of sabotaging a sitting president. That is a crime, a scandal, and it has the makings of a true constitutional crisis. But the media isn’t interested in running that angle down. They’re only interested in nailing the president for corruption, which is an interest they only just developed.

Look, if Trump is ever guilty of real abuses of power, real corruption, real scandal, I will be the first to call for his head, metaphorically. And I don’t think a Trump scandal is mitigated or made less important or more acceptable by the fact that Obama also had scandals. I’m not going to shout “But Obama!” in order to bail Trump out of whatever trouble he may bring upon himself. Leftists spent eight years shouting “But Bush” for Obama’s sake, and I don’t intend to adopt that strategy. But the fact is that Obama did have scandals — real scandals, terrible scandals, scandalous scandals — and, in the interest of truth, we can’t allow the Left to stand right in front of us and rewrite history on the fly. The truth matters.

I say it again: The truth matters.

The truth matters. It matters now just as it mattered for the past eight years. So when Dan Rather claims that Trump may already be guilty of the biggest political scandal in his lifetime, and the New York Times insists that Obama had a scandal free White House, and USA Today along with many other outlets echo that absolutely ridiculous assertion, it behooves those of us who value the truth to calmly respond: UM, WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU PEOPLE TALKING ABOUT?

I don’t know what the future holds. Perhaps Trump will indeed eventually own the biggest political scandal in modern history, but in order to achieve that feat, he’s got a lot of work to do. He’s not there yet. Not anywhere close.

Despite what our news media says as it awakens from a coma, Flynn’s conversation with a Russian ambassador is not a bigger scandal than Obama targeting his political opponents with the IRS.

It’s not bigger than Obama’s ATF shipping guns to Mexican drug cartels.

It’s not bigger than Obama sending millions to Iran and then lying about it.

It’s not bigger than Obama’s DOJ spying on journalists.

It’s not bigger than the Obama Administration orchestrating a series of violent coups in the Middle East, funneling weapons to terrorist groups, then leaving an ambassador to die in Benghazi, and then lying about it.

It’s not bigger than Obama’s State Department, headed by a woman who conducted government business on an illegal private server, selling our foreign policy to the highest bidder.

And it’s not bigger, in my view, than Obama’s NSA conducting mass surveillance without a warrant, or Obama assassinating American citizens without a trial, or the DOJ conducting ideologically charged witch hunts against police departments across the country while Obama used his bully pulpit to push false narratives in order to foment racial chaos and division.

Trump may well seize upon the precedent set by Obama and repeat some of these same atrocities. If that happens, we’ll finally see what it looks like when the media actually reports on the types of stories listed above. We’ll also be treated to the spectacle of leftists denouncing Trump’s abuses of, say, the IRS or the DOJ, while insisting that his abuses in these areas are so totally different from Obama’s identical abuses because, well, because, you see, because of various reasons and so forth.

But as they continue with these double standards, we should remember the truth. It won’t excuse whatever Trump may do, but it matters nonetheless. The truth matters. Even if it doesn’t matter at all to the media or the Left.

http://www.theblaze.com/contributions/matt-walsh-if-you-just-started-caring-about-political-scandals-again-youre-a-brazen-hypocrite/

To be sure, there are many more scandals Walsh left out. A few I can think of off the top of my head --

The thousands of veterans who died as a result of Obama's incompetent management of the VA.

The release by Obama's EPA of millions of gallons of toxic waste into the Animas River in the southwestern U.S. onto land owned by the Navajo Nation. 

The failure to act when Obama's EPA learned of the lead problem in Flint, Michigan's water supply.

AG Eric Holder lying to Congress about signing the order to surveil journalist James Rosen. Holder was cited for contempt of Congress but was not punished for his perjury and he kept his job of course.

Obama caught on an open mic conspiring with the Russian Foreign Minister to deceive the American electorate prior to the 2012 election.

"If you like your plan, you can keep your plan. If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor. Period."