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Tag: david axelrod
In Podcast, Obama Says He Would Have Defeated Trump – Who Tweets “No Way!”

In Podcast, Obama Says He Would Have Defeated Trump – Who Tweets “No Way!”

HONOLULU (Reuters) – U.S. President Barack Obama said in an interview broadcast on Monday that he would have won most Americans’ support if he had been able to run against Donald Trump for a third term.

“No way!” Trump countered in a tweet, citing as liabilities U.S. companies taking jobs overseas, the fight against Islamic State militants and Obama’s signature healthcare law.

Barred by the U.S. Constitution from seeking a third four-year-term, the president told his former adviser David Axelrod in a podcast that Americans would have backed Obama’s vision.

“I’m confident that if I had run again and articulated it, I think I could’ve mobilized a majority of the American people to rally behind it,” Obama said, referring to his 2008 campaign message of hope and change.

A wealthy businessman, the Republican Trump will assume his first public office when he succeeds Obama on January 20. He defeated Democrat Hillary Clinton on November 8 with a promise to clean up Washington.

In a tweet, Clinton spokesman Brian Fallon said Obama would have beaten Trump and Clinton would have won if not for an FBI statement shortly before the election disclosing new material on Clinton’s email practices as secretary of state.

Clinton’s aides have said FBI Director James Comey’s announcement, which led to no charges, swung the election, a charge Trump’s team has dismissed.

Obama said Clinton “performed wonderfully under really tough circumstances.” He said she focused on Trump’s flaws and could have argued more that the Democratic Party agenda helped working people.

Trump garnered more than 270 of the 538 state-by-state electoral votes to win the presidency. Clinton won 48.2 percent of the popular vote compared with 46.1 percent for Trump, according to the Associated Press.

(Reporting and writing by Emily Stephenson with Obama in Hawaii; Additional reporting by Susan Heavey in Washington; Editing by Howard Goller)

Eric Holder Has Changed His Mind About Edward Snowden

Eric Holder Has Changed His Mind About Edward Snowden

A year after leaving office, former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder is singing a different tune about Edward Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor who leaked 1.7 million documents back in 2013 and exposed alarming details about the government’s surveillance methods abroad and on its own citizens.

Holder was the head of the Justice Department when the leak occurred. Back then, he maintained that Snowden had to return home and plead guilty, and that the Obama White House was not willing to consider “the notion of clemency.”

But now it seems that Holder has changed his mind. In a conversation with David Axelrod on The Axe Files podcast, which is produced by CNN and the University of Chicago Institute of Politics, Holder said that while he still believes Snowden’s actions and the way he carried them out were “inappropriate and illegal,” he thinks that Snowden deserves some credit for shining a light on secret surveillance techniques that he did not even know about, and starting a debate about the importance of individual privacy.

“I think that he actually performed a public service by raising the debate that we engaged in and by the changes that we made,” Holder told Axelrod.

Holder stated that Snowden should still come back to the U.S. and stand trial, but that any future judge should take the “usefulness of having had that national debate” into account when deciding on a sentence.

Snowden joined the discussion on Twitter to comment on Holder’s change of heart by highlighting the different stands the government has taken on the leak throughout the years:

The whistleblower, who has lived in Russia under political asylum since 2013, faces espionage charges that could hold a punishment of up to 30 years.
Snowden appeared via video at an event at a University of Chicago Institute of Politics, which produces the Axes Files podcast, earlier this month and said he has always wanted to come back to the U.S. and make his case to a jury, but only if the government guarantees a fair trial. For Snowden, a “fair trial” means being allowed a public interest defense, which is not currently allowed under the Espionage Act.
Endorse This: Jon Stewart Doesn’t Think ‘Man Baby’ Trump Eligible For Office

Endorse This: Jon Stewart Doesn’t Think ‘Man Baby’ Trump Eligible For Office

Ever since Jon Stewart taped his last Daily Show episode nine months ago, the liberal satirist and perennial thorn in the side of America’s political media has emerged periodically to comment on the freak show that’s taken over our election cycle. Yesterday, in front of a packed house at the University of Chicago for a taping of former Obama advisor David Axelrod’s podcast, Jon Stewart spent the hour dissecting the culture that created Donald Trump, and the media that’s profiting from him.

“He’s just doing judo against them. What works for 24-hour networks?” Stewart asked. “The voices that are amplified are the ones that are the most conflict-oriented, the most extreme. Those are the guys that get the most airtime.”

The whole evening is worth a listen, if only to imagine an alternate reality in which Stewart waited just one more year to retire. Jon Stewart’s most pointed remarks, the ones that sounded more like a Daily Show taping than an effete Institute of Politics discussion, came in his description of Donald Trump’s eligibility for office:

Endorse This: The Story Of ‘Yes We Can’

Endorse This: The Story Of ‘Yes We Can’

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Former Obama political guru David Axelrod has a fun story as he promotes his new memoir: The famous campaign slogan, “Yes We Can,” which first appeared in Barack Obama’s 2004 campaign for the U.S. Senate, almost didn’t happen at all.

Click above to watch Axelrod tell the tale of how the candidate Obama himself nearly vetoed the slogan — and to find out who saved it in a split-second, all of it very early in this lengthy interview — then share this video!

Video via CNN.

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