What a difference eight years makes. With few exceptions, our national media is confused and depressed about the prospect of President Donald Trump.
Back in 2008 however, the media was downright giddy over the election of Obama. Some journalists even wanted George W. Bush to step aside early so Obama could be sworn in before January 20th.
The Media Research Center recorded all of this for posterity:
December 15, 2008 – Must Swear In Obama Right Now“We can’t afford to waste an hour, much less a day or a week or a month. And this business of being a lame duck President and saying, you know, ‘Adios. I’m going to the ranch. I’m just not going to do very much during this period.’ We can’t afford it….We’re in possibly, possibly the biggest crisis we’ve been in since December 7, 1941, and maybe since the time of the Civil War. So, we can’t afford to have this interregnum.”— Ex-CBS Evening News anchor Dan Rather on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, December 5.“If I had my druthers right now, we would convene a special session of Congress, amend the Constitution and move up the inauguration from Jan. 20 to Thanksgiving Day….Just get me a Supreme Court justice and a Bible, and let’s swear in Barack Obama right now — by choice — with the same haste we did — by necessity — with L.B.J. in the back of Air Force One. “— New York Times columnist Tom Friedman, Nov. 23.“Thanksgiving is next week, and President Bush could make it a really special holiday by resigning. Seriously….Just to be on the safe side, the Vice President ought to turn in his resignation first. (We’re desperate, but not crazy.) Then House Speaker Nancy Pelosi would become President until Jan. 20. Obviously, she’d defer to her party’s incoming chief executive, and Barack Obama could begin governing.”— New York Times columnist Gail Collins in her November 22 column, “Time for Him to Go.”
Had you forgotten how over-the-top the liberal media’s cheer leading was for Obama?
There’s more:
Host Gwen Ifill: “Maybe what people are beginning to say is that this President-elect should be President now? …”New York Times reporter Peter Baker: “That’s right, exactly. People voted for change and [there’s] this strange, odd 77-day waiting period that we impose, in effect, between our election and our inauguration.”— PBS’s Washington Week, December 5.“No lame-duck President can do anything meaningful after the successor is elected. The time is spent figuring out things like how many presidential pardons to issue, many to convicted political pals….We should move the President’s inauguration up to the first Tuesday in December, one month after the election….People who elect a new president are eager for the change to take place. The sooner the better.”— USA Today founder Al Neuharth, November 14 column.
Flash forward to today and things are quite different.
The Washington Examiner reports:
White House warns Trump, ‘only one president at a time’The White House rebuffed President-elect Trump’s criticism of the administration’s decision to not veto a U.N. resolution critical of Israel’s settlements.In a briefing on the move Friday, Ben Rhodes, deputy national security adviser, said, “On the president-elect, the first thing I’d just say is that there’s one president at a time. President Obama is the president of the United States until Jan. 20, and we are taking this action, of course, as U.S. policy.”
Featured image is a screen cap.
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