RUTHFULLY YOURS

One ungainly paragraph delivered during a Wednesday interview on the “Breakfast Club” encapsulates just about all one needs to know about Barack Obama.

“People were surprised about a lot of Hispanic folks who voted for Trump,” Obama told a trio of black interviewers, “but there’s a lot of evangelical Hispanics who, you know, the fact that Trump says racist things about Mexicans, or puts detainees, undocumented workers [sic] in cages.  They think that’s less important than the fact that he supports their views on gay marriage or abortion.”

Where to begin?  How about with Obama’s patronizing use of the word “folks” when speaking to black Americans?  Growing up in a white household in America’s lest black state, Obama’s closest brush with black culture as an adolescent was watching the “Mod Squad” on TV.

Although no one mimics black vernacular and speech patterns as egregiously as Hillary, Obama’s efforts are almost as grating.  Does Obama repeatedly say “a lot of” and “you know” when speaking to largely white audiences?  I doubt it.

Then there is the implication that Trump appealed largely to evangelical Hispanics.  Many Hispanics took exception.  Here are some of the comments cited — a surprise here — by the Washington Post:

Obama insults Hispanics, says we only voted for Trump because of faith/social issues.

As important as life issues are, the economic factors drove most working-class voters to Trump, including Latinos.

A lot of things are wrong with Barack Obama’s condescending remarks about conservative Hispanics. Chief among them is that Donald Trump never ran opposed to gay marriage, as Obama has in the past.

you gotta love how @BarackObama continues to show who he really is. He was THE MOST RACIST president in modern history. He regularly attacks Christian beliefs, this country and now is attacking Hispanics. HE put illegals in cages and left DACA in limbo. Horrible guy!

Not to mention, YOU built the cages you fool!

Having grown lazy speaking to people whose knowledge base is as restricted as his own, Obama forgets that Hispanics have access to news sources other than the New York Times.  Although he and his lovely bride Michelle have been pushing the “Trump put people in cages” line before and after the election, even liberal fact-checkers had to acknowledge that the “cages” predated Trump.

Said the USA Today fact-checker in bold: “Michelle Obama criticized the Trump administration for putting kids in cages, but the cages were built during the Obama administration.”  The media called Michelle out on this in August, but Obama was still slamming Trump in November for the cages his own administration built.  I doubt if he would have made this claim to a white audience.

Obama’s critics were right, too, in pointing out that it was he who ran for president opposing the redefinition of marriage.  Obama’s claim that Trump “supports their views on gay marriage” is pure projection.

Said Obama famously — and blasphemously — at Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church in 2008, “I believe that marriage is the union between a man and a woman.  Now, for me as a Christian, it’s also a sacred union.  God’s in the mix.”  It was not until 2012 that Obama “evolved” his way out of this divinely inspired belief.

In Obama’s new memoir, A Promised Land, he makes no mention of this remark or the backlash from the gay community that followed.  Once the Supreme Court removed the issue from the political sphere in 2015, Trump never did feel the need to address it.

Then there is the canard that “Trump says racist things about Mexicans.”  For starters, “Mexican” is no more a race than “American.”  Like Americans, Mexicans come in all races.  In fact, there is considerably more African DNA in the American gene pool than in the Mexican.

The Trump quote that triggered Obama’s faux outrage is the one he made the day he declared for the presidency in June 2015.  “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best,” said Trump, referring specifically to illegal border-crossers.  They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us.  They’re bringing drugs.  They’re bringing crime.  They’re rapists.  And some, I assume, are good people.”

The media flipped out but not immediately.  Reporting the next day, Alexander Burns of the New York Times did not mention the “rapists” comment until deep in the article, and even then he put it in its proper context.  Wrote Burns, “On Tuesday, [Trump] vowed to build a ‘great wall’ on the Mexican border to keep out rapists and other criminals, who he said were sneaking into the United States in droves.”

As Trump started showing strength in the polls, however, he became — in the media’s eyes — more and more of a racist.  Check out these quotes that emerged in the days and weeks after Trump announced.

Associated Press: “Trump called Mexican immigrants rapists and criminals.”

CBS News: “Trump defends calling Mexican immigrants ‘rapists.'”

L.A. Times: “describing Mexican immigrants as ‘rapists.'”

Fortune: “in a speech branding Mexican immigrants as criminals and rapists.”

Huffington Post: “He called Latino immigrants ‘criminals’ and ‘rapists.'”

The Washington Post: “He referred to Mexicans as “rapists.”

In 2016, Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Kaine went even farther in his slander of Trump.  “The thing that amazes me is the depth of his trash-talking with Latinos,” said Kaine, “saying all Mexicans are rapists and going after Latino immigrants.”

Writing in Salon six months after Trump’s speech, liberal professor Alberto Martinez tried to set the record straight.  “You might well dislike Trump’s words.  I did,” wrote Martinez.  “But let’s not make it worse.  He did not say that all Mexicans are rapists.  Yet that’s what many commentators did.”  Martinez then went on to cite the staggering number of crimes committed by illegal aliens just in Texas, where he lives.  He is a brave fellow.

Barack Obama is not.  He expects Hispanics to give more weight to his lies and half-truths about Trump’s supposed racism than to Trump’s record on the economy and his public support of the pro-life cause.  For Obama, the fact that nearly eight million unborn babies were killed on his watch, more than two million of them black, is something of an afterthought.  For a healthy percentage of Hispanic voters, it is not.

Jack Cashill’s new book, Unmasking Obama: The Fight to Tell the True Story of a Failed Presidency, is widely available. See also www.cashill.com.