Fox News star Kayleigh McEnany set Barack Obama straight after the former President took a few swipes at GOP presidential candidate Tim Scott.
David Axelrod interviewed Obama for CNN and asked the former president what he thought of Scott’s discussions of race. Obama answered:
“I think there’s a long history of African-American or other minority candidates within the Republican Party who will validate America and say, ‘Everything’s great, and we can make it.’ Nikki Haley I think has a similar approach.
“I’m not being cynical about Tim Scott individually, but I am maybe suggesting the rhetoric of ‘Can’t we all get along, that has to be undergirded with an honest accounting of our past and our present.”
Kayleigh said: “Emily, this is just dripping with condescension and fear. You heard him laugh like pretty loudly when Axelrod said it takes a different turn at the end of Tim Scott’s speeches, you hear him laughing.
“Then he says I haven’t taken time to study Tim Scott’s speech. Obviously, you have, you laugh as he tells you.
“He fears Nikki Haley. He is name calling about them.
“To see a former sitting president scoffing at a sitting U.S. senator and current presidential candidate saying I haven’t spent a lot of time studying speeches, to your point, you have.
“You have at least enough to put your voice out there.
“When he talks about crippling generational poverty, the only thing crippling anyone is the current president and policy out of the Democratic Party.
“It is overregulation, complete focus on language and things that don’t foster economic growth and opportunity.
“He hit the nail on the head of what exactly Senator Scott was saying.
“For example, on “The View,” he said why are you calling me an exception.
“That is so disgusting, he said.
“For the former president to tick off, including Supreme Court Clarence Thomas and say what they hold, this view they hold which is that the opportunities afforded them were incredible and like all Americans, that should be extended to everyone, why is that supposed to be again the exception and not the rule.
“This is someone who sat in the White House in the Oval Office and said specifically how that was monumental change.
“Wouldn’t he be the first to say yes, change is happening, I guess it is not.
Tim Scott said: “Mark, he missed a softball moving at slow speed with a big bat.
“You can’t miss this opportunity.
“America was hungry for bringing our country together, this coalition building where you can see Black kids and White kids and red ones and brown ones.
“As MLK spoke about, joining hands and singing with new meaning, ‘My country ‘tis of thee.’
“President Biden ran as the great uniter, and he has been the great divider.
“I have heard more negative things about people under his leadership than I have in a long time.
“I’ll tell you, the one thing the far left does not want a Black person to be in this country is a conservative.
“It is possible for Americans to come together not because of the color of our skin, but because of the consistency of our value system.”
Checked in last week with an old friend, @BarackObama, to talk about, among other things, the current state of democracy. And as you’d expect expect, he had lots of interesting stuff to say!
I hope you’ll download our #AxeFiles conversation, which will post tomorrow morning! pic.twitter.com/R0E0IU9t0p— David Axelrod (@davidaxelrod) June 14, 2023
My #AxeFiles conversation w/@BarackObama is up, including his very honest assessment below about how much his election, as the first Black POTUS, fueled the white populist backlash that propelled Trump.
Listen to the whole conversation.https://t.co/Y0MxrE66wC pic.twitter.com/c8f6J8WX4H— David Axelrod (@davidaxelrod) June 15, 2023