Up next in 10
Is America suffering from 'Obama Derangement Syndrome'?
Investigative journalist and author Nina Burleigh joins Henry Riley to discuss Barack Obama's intervention ahead of the US midterm elections and the increasingly tense battle between Democrats and Republicans.
Nina says Republicans are facing a potential 'tsunami of disaster' at the polls, as Donald Trump struggles to convince voters on the economy and increasingly turns to what she describes as 'race-baiting'.
Discussing Trump's rhetoric about immigrants and his attacks on Democratic politicians, Nina calls it 'overt racism' and argues that part of Trump's political appeal can be traced back to the reaction to Barack Obama's election.
Listen to the full show on the all-new LBC App: https://app.af.lbc.co.uk/btnc/thenewlbcapp
#henryriley #uspolitics #politics #donaldtrump #trump #obama #barackobama #usmidterms #midterms #debate #LBC
LBC is the home of live debate around news and current affairs in the UK.
Join in the conversation and listen at https://www.lbc.co.uk/
Sign up to LBC's weekly newsletter here: https://l-bc.co/signup
Show More Show Less View Video Transcript
0:00
Former U.S. President Barack Obama has attacked the Trump administration over the Iran war
0:04
high consumer prices, as he hit the campaign trail for the Democrats ahead of the U.S. midterm election
0:10
Speaking from Ohio, President Obama criticized Donald Trump's record in office. After two years of chaos and cruelty and corruption and incompetence
0:25
the likes of which we have not seen in modern times you get a chance to say enough's enough
0:33
we are voting for change the former president also criticized trump's taste in home decor
0:40
does anybody really think this guy in the white house right now is spending all that time thinking
0:45
about these issues i i mean i i don't know if you've noticed but he seems very focused on home
0:53
renovations. He should be on HGTV. Guys building a ballroom that's bigger than the White House
1:06
It's paved over the Rose Garden, put a helicopter pad on the South Lawn
1:10
and there's gold everywhere. What's up with the gold? Everything, more gold
1:19
He's got the White House looking like Saddam Hussein opened a cheesecake factory
1:23
The current incumbent, President Trump, hit back. Remember when Barack Hussein Obama used to say that there'd be no manufacturing
1:32
He said, we're not a manufacturer. So he was wrong. Because of our economic policy tariffs, which again are bringing in massive companies
1:42
I don't want to mention, Audie, but without tariffs they would not have been coming in
1:46
You don't have to. Nobody wants to. Well, he's going to say that's true, actually
1:51
He wants to. Everyone wants to. Without tariffs, they're not here. Without tariffs
1:55
We have twenty two point two bill two trillion dollars. And now he's making a speech for Mohammed today
2:04
In a massive crowd, a massive crowd has shown up. Where are they? They never talk about my crowd
2:12
Nina Burley is investigative journalist and author of the American Freak Show substack and joins me now
2:19
Well, I mean, clearly it's all gearing up ahead of the midterm elections. What do you think of the intervention from President Obama
2:25
Does he still have the clout that he once did when he was first elected? I do think that, you know, Obama is enormously popular, obviously, with the Democrats in this country
2:35
I mean, he's the last sort of great speaker and in his own way, you know, a big uniter for the Democrats
2:43
And you can see yesterday in Ohio he was stumping for the the Senate candidate and the governor the gubernatorial candidate And he filled the stadium It a 10 person stadium And I think there were just you know people to the rafters And meanwhile Trump appearances over there are
3:07
they're under attended, they're, they're choosing smaller venues so that the TV cameras can't pan
3:13
and see the empty seats. And even with that, I think the last stadium had seating for 4000
3:20
and only 3,000 showed up and they had to cover empty seats with tarps
3:24
So nothing makes Donald Trump matter than that. And I think what you're seeing today, of course, is, you know, Obama said that about the Cheesecake Factory and the Leaf
3:37
And I don't know if your listeners know what the Cheesecake Factory is
3:41
I don't have enough knowledge of, you know, restaurants in the UK to give you an ogy
3:49
But, you know, it's a lowbrow chain restaurant that, you know, serves cheesecake
3:56
And so the response from the left or sorry, from the right this morning is, oh, well, you know, this is exactly why Trump got elected in 2016, because the Democrats have put, you know, put this this, you know, supposed populist and brown populist in the White House for two terms
4:16
terms. And, you know, he's never even stepped foot in a cheesecake factory and it's a working
4:21
class restaurant. And, you know, he's this elite, you know, an elite spokesman for the elites. And
4:27
that, you know, that's what they'll throw at. That's what they throw at Obama. And so, you know
4:31
it's just rhetorical silliness going on. Meanwhile, you know, we're coming up on, you know
4:37
it's a very tense time for both sides, really, but especially for the Republicans, because
4:43
you know as much as they want to say these polls are fake every single poll is showing
4:49
you know a tsunami of disaster for them. Yes and this is because currently the Republicans control
4:57
the Senate and the House of Representatives they control both houses of Congress to remind people
5:01
and this crucial vote that's on the 3rd of November so just a couple of weeks or just a
5:06
week away, I should say. It looks like certainly the Senate, if I'm right, if not the House
5:13
will go to the Democrats and what the current polls are showing. Yeah, I mean, yes, I think I thought it was the other way around
5:23
It might be the other way around, right. Yeah, I mean, the House is definitely going, I think. The Senate is trickier
5:29
but it's close. I mean, it looks like they might even get a Democratic senator out of Texas
5:35
which is just unheard of for, you know, since, since blue dog Democrats, since the yellow, what do they call them
5:42
The Democrats of, of before LBJ and Kennedy that they just don't
5:47
they don't vote for Democrats down there. So, you know, there kind of a sea change underway And I think the the panic that you see on the right is that you know Trump goes out and gives these speeches And you know there is a sense among you know American voters that you know the economy is messed up that especially obviously with the gas prices people here are big drivers and they they beside themselves
6:15
I mean, you go there's some states at six dollars a gallon. It's just unbelievable
6:20
And so what you hear Trump doing is saying, well, you know, belittling that problem
6:27
I mean, that was one of the things he did yesterday with this baby voice. Oh, you know, you whittle liners
6:32
And meanwhile, you know, we are making so much frickin' money. And he starts talking about how much money the oil and gas industry is making on oil and gas right now, as if that's something that people here in this country would be cheering about
6:46
And his staff, I think there's reporting today that they're just beside themselves because he can't be controlled. He says what he wants. He says these things and they just come off so tone deaf
6:58
And I just wanted to add, you know, he talked about the trillions coming in for manufacturing
7:04
And that actually is a completely debunked number. It's debunked by AP News, Bloomberg, economics, you know, political fact checking
7:14
It's not true that that kind of money has come in. What's going on is they're getting these, you know, pledges
7:22
their non-binding foreign promises from like UAE and Qatar that that, you know, they would put money into this country
7:30
And the money that Trump is talking about would actually exceed UAE's and Qatar's sovereign wealth funds
7:37
So it's like not even realistic. But, you know, he throws these numbers around and he throws these
7:43
But the main thing that's going on here is that and unfortunately, it's very ugly
7:48
It's it's the it's the race baiting that's happening where his speech is always going to ask you about that
7:54
I mean, in this particular speech, he talks about a word I can't say, but S house countries in particular as well
8:03
And says, why do we always take people from these countries and says from Yemen, Libya, Haiti and Somalia
8:09
Why can't we take people from Norway, Sweden or Denmark? To paraphrase him. Yeah. I mean, yeah, it's pretty overt
8:15
It's overt racism. And so that sort of adds to the picture of what's going on here when Obama shows up
8:23
He's brown, obviously. His middle name is Hussein, which they will not say his name without mentioning the Muslim name
8:30
which they're also doing with the Senate candidate in Michigan, who's extremely popular
8:35
This is just from, this is Abdul El-Sayed, who, and Trump was just calling him Mohammed, doesn't he
8:40
Yes, because that's his middle name. And now you see, you know, when people interview his people, they're all like, well, he's hiding his middle name
8:46
And it's like, well, what's the middle name of the guy who's running against him? Do you guys really care about middle names
8:50
But you know why they're doing it. But the thing about especially with the Somalis that been going on here for a long time because they really settled into Minneapolis which is a which is a Democrat controlled city and state
9:06
And, you know, they've they've pumped up this story about, you know, kind of a social services grifting scam that that some Somalis were involved in there as a as an example of how, you know
9:20
these brown people are coming here and they're stealing your tax money. And in fact, the person
9:25
who went to jail for that scam is a white female. But the whole point of this is to, you know, again
9:31
you're going back to Obama and Obama, you know, 2016 election, Trump wins. Obama has been president
9:37
for two terms in this country. We've had this brown president and then the shock of having
9:41
suddenly, oh, this almost out racist, which he is now actually an out racist, the way he's talking
9:47
And what you see is, you know, they like to call the liberals, they're suffering from Trump derangement syndrome. That's a thing. TDS, you've got TDS. And actually what's going on here is, you know, this country has been suffering from Obama derangement syndrome for a long time
10:06
You see that ODS, you see that in the in the way that he talks about brown people and the way that people that his you know, I think it's a minority of Americans respond to that, that, you know, a lot of people have never gotten over the election of a very competent brown person to the White House, even in a very popular brown person
10:31
And so, you know, unfortunately, this country is still dealing with, you know, struggling with the the dregs of of this really abominable instinct that that's been here, you know, been been sort of under, you know, it went underground, you know, in the generation after, I guess, you know, the Kennedy and the Great Society and so on, where you did, you know, have welfare and black
11:01
the black people began to get a little bit more, you know, some fairness was pushed into the system
11:09
And so that, you know, we're I mean, I mean, the poverty in this country for black people before
11:14
Kennedy, you know, when Kennedy was president in the 60s, the before they had this great society
11:19
thing, it was incredible. I mean, it was like the South was like, you know, they had maternal
11:24
death rates that were like Africa and and, you know, diseases that you only see in like
11:30
you know, Africa. And it was this country that, you know, they pulled that, they pulled together
11:34
you know, and, and change things. And then of course you had DEI and you have, you know
11:39
this effort to sort of balance things out a little bit, balancing out institutional and historic
11:45
racism. And, and there is a minority of people who are supporting Trump, who are very responsive
11:53
to that. And we've seen those debates come over here as well
news