Even Democrats Tiring of Obama’s Insults

Time to Get Out of the Way

At MSNBC, journalist Jonathan Capehart warns that “Obama people” act like they “know everything.” It’s time, he chides, for them to move over and get out of the way for the “next generation.”

If NJ Democrats, gathered for a fund-raising event, were looking forward to another “trademark scolding” from Barack Obama, the 44^th president didn’t disappoint, reports James Freeman in the WSJ.

From CNN:

Former President Barack Obama issued a call to action for Democrats at a private fundraiser in New Jersey on Friday evening, urging those frustrated by the state of the country under President Donald Trump to “stand up for the things that you think are right.”

From Barack Obama:

“I think it’s going to require a little bit less navel-gazing and a little less whining and being in fetal positions. And it’s going to require Democrats to just toughen up,” Obama said at the fundraiser, according to excerpts of his remarks exclusively obtained by CNN.

Obama’s comments to this wealthy NJ crowd were more gentle than last fall’s fact-free attack on black men who chose not to support Kamala Harris for president, notes Mr. Freeman. There are signs that even loyal Democrats are tiring of Obama’s castigation. As proof, let’s raise several wet fingers to determine how the wind is blowing.

One reporter at NBC talked about a “growing sentiment across a party searching for a path forward: Team Obama’s bloom may be falling off the rose.”

Team NBC added that “even the former president’s luster was showing signs of fading last fall, a phenomenon that threatens to persist as the next crop of young voters ages into adulthood.”

Barack Obama, who has spent much of his time since he left the White House producing movies, documentaries, and podcasts while building a beachfront compound in Hawaii. Obama has been a busy man. One must marvel that he has had any time to play golf on Martha’s Vineyard.

Recently, in a conversation with historian Heather Cox Richardson, Obama warned of the country’s “dangerously close” slide into autocracy. Obama continued to scold Democrats who had not spoken out against Trump before he moved on to mocking the level of sacrifice that risk-taking would entail.

Mr. Freeman wonders if Obama has been in the game too long to maintain constant talking points. Obama’s expressed sentiments contradict each other.

If Mr. Trump really were the demonic dictator of “resistance” lore, then it really would require courage to confront him.

Mr. Obama has always seemed to understand that the allegations against Mr. Trump are overblown, including the ones Mr. Obama initiated. But our 44th president employs them anyway in seeking partisan and ideological advantage.

Obama’s criticisms were so vague that he might have been engaging in a rare moment of self-criticism.

According to a recent CIA report:

In May 2025, Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (DCIA) John Ratcliffe tasked CIA’s Directorate of Analysis (DA) to conduct a lessons-learned review of the procedures and analytic tradecraft employed in the highest classified version of the Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) Russia’s Influence Campaign Targeting the 2016 US Presidential Election, dated 30 December 2016. The review focused particular attention on the ICA’s most debated judgment—that Russian President Vladimir Putin “aspired” to help then-candidate Donald Trump win the election…

The DA Review identified multiple procedural anomalies in the preparation of the ICA. These included a highly compressed production timeline, stringent compartmentation, and excessive involvement of agency heads, all of which led to departures from standard practices in the drafting, coordination, and reviewing of the ICA. These departures impeded efforts to apply rigorous tradecraft, particularly to the assessment’s most contentious judgment.

As in 2025, continues Mr. Freeman, “Mr. Obama’s behavior in 2017 strongly suggested that he knew the collusion theory was bunk all along even as he oversaw its promotion.”