When Obama Began Strangling the Republic “By the Book” Part II

By John Kass

Sunday July 27, 2025

I’ve been greatly honored to be asked to give a talk at Hillsdale College on “The Decline of Trust in Legacy Media.”

I wouldn’t call it a lecture. Just a talk. But how should I begin?

I thought I’d begin by calling Barack Obama up on the stage. He could lie down on a couch and begin pontificating, his favorite activity, and I’d sit nearby in a comfy overstuffed leather wing chair and take notes, asking some pertinent questions.

Barack might consider this a sequel to my national column for johnkassnews.com on Sunday—it was carried by Real Clear Politics and by Powerline Blog titled “When Obama Began Strangling the Republic “By the Book” Part I.”

Barack began strangling the republic years ago, just about the time the media began treating him as a mythological creature. They lost all credibility about him. And he took that journalistic adoration, turned it and killed legacy media, too.

As some of you may know, I was a reporter and lead columnist at the Chicago Tribune for some 40 years, that is until leftist billionaire George Soros showed the Tribune and me that Soros was boss.

And I witnessed firsthand all the reporters wiggling like puppies, all but soiling the carpets at Obama’s approach. The media treated Barack Obama as something of a winged sea creature, a Pegasus up from the beaches of Hawaii as they smoked their Hopium in every newsroom in America. Their eyes were slits. And he was their wizard of a thousand kings.

They wanted to ride him as if he were a unicorn. They wanted to love him too. He was their fantasy black politico. There was no way they could have been objective about him, any more than a child could be objective about their first pony.

So, to get some distance, I called a wise colleague Steve Huntley, the retired editorial writer for the Chicago Sun Times. He spent 30 years there. And I worked across the street at the Trib.

He explained that there are many reasons the American people have lost trust in legacy media. If you had a sharp enough scalpel, you might consider the shift to exclusive subscription models, increased where partisanship has greater leverage.

“And COVID 19, and Fauci. Don’t forget Fauci,” said Huntley. “And what Obama did in that White House meeting you wrote about.”

That was the so-called “by the book”  meeting in the Oval Office called by Obama in 2017  with his Deep State rats, CIA director John Brennan (who lied to Congress) and then liar and FBI director James Comey and other leaders of the Obama Deep State. He was determined they would push the lie that President Trump was a stooge for Russian strongman Vladimir Putin.

As Tulsi Gabbard, the director of National Intelligence pointed out, it was that meeting where Obama began throttling the American republic, using his spy chiefs and secret police to push manufactured intelligence to hurt Trump, and using the corporate legacy media–including the Washington Post and New York Times–to force the lie to be repeated again and again.

The Washington Post and the New York Times were given Pulitzer Prizes, to parade before American people that they were the guardians of the republic.

Again, all of this was offered up by Trump’s Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard. Full disclosure here: My brother Nicholas is the acting chairman of the National Intelligence Council. He served 31 years at CIA, the State Department, the White House and other postings before he retired. He was called back to serve the country a few months ago. We don’t ever talk about his work.

But I know this: He for years has loathed the Deep State. He began studying the Deep State during his service in Ankara where it began. He knows better than most that the Deep State cannot warp a nation without help from national media.

And the legacy media in America was not interested in what Gabbard had to say. They ignored the story the same way they ignored news of the Hunter Biden laptop. Know this: The Deep State cannot exist without a compliant Deep State Media.

Hey @NYTimes @WashPost,

Did you not hear that DNI Gabbard exposed a story with historic implications yesterday? Why the media black out? Why are you afraid to tell the truth to the American people?

Ignoring the culpability of Obama and your deep state sources will not change… pic.twitter.com/Y1hbNDJcTb

— Office of the DNI (@ODNIgov) July 24, 2025

And for those not yet willing to placidly chew their cud as they’re directed—by sweet promise or the urgency of the cattle prod and into the stockyard chutes, I recommend the following from Margot Cleveland and Mollie Hemingway in the Federalist: Exclusive: ‘This Should NOT Be Included’ — Read Intel Officials’ Objections To ‘Extremely Sketchy’ Steele Dossier By Margot Cleveland and Mollie Hemingway

“The Obama administration hid intelligence showing that Russia’s meddling in 2016 election was no big deal. They suppressed that because they didn’t want Donald Trump to know about it,” Hemingway said on Fox News’ America Reports. “Then they immediately began leaking to The Washington Post and to the New Your Times false things, things that weren’t true. That Russia had conspired with Trump to steal the election. And The Washington Post and New York Times when they were asked to publish these things that were not true. They just went ahead and did it. They took the word of John Brennan and other sources like that who had made these false claims.

“This dangerous conspiracy theory that was perpetuated against America. They were pushing it in real time, and they are lying when they say when this is just quibbling about things. The information was released by Tulsi Gabbard shows that career officials in our intelligence agencies were screaming from the rooftops that what Obama and Brennon and Comey were doing wasn’t true and they have the emails and the documents showing that. I have reporting at The Federalist that I did this week showing what some career officials said when Brennan tried to say falsely that Russia was trying to help Trump. Or when Comey falsely tried to include that made up the dossier. The actual officials were saying this isn’t real, this cannot meet the standards that we have. And so when these people say that it is no big deal they are lying. It actually is a massive deal

“And the only way they can survive is by hiding the actual information that was released. And it’s important for America that that not happen because this crime that was committed was a very serious one against the American people and it cannot just be brushed under the rug.”

My take is that the usual suspects from the Washington Post, New York Times and CNN are brushing furiously. Why? They were complicit. They’re telling the American people that this scandal Gabbard is referring to isn’t worthy of their attention–the same way they insisted that the Hunter Biden laptop was the hallmark of Russia disinformation, though it was Hunter Biden’s laptop and it was chock full of real information about the corrupt Biden crime family.

It wasn’t a nothing burger. The corrupt legacy media went out of its way to protect Biden. Just as they’re bending over for Obama, their leftist unicorn. And they climb up on the dunghill, braying like donkeys that “Democracy dies in Darkness.”

When I was a smart-ass kid copyboy at the Tribune, when I’d make runs for coffee or cigarettes, dreaming that someday I’d write under my own byline as a real honest-to-goodness newspaperman, I’d pass the amazing quotations heralding our Western traditions that Col. Robert McCormick had carved into the walls.

Some were from Milton. Others were from Flannery O’Connor.

My favorite, the one that stuck with me all the years since, was from Lord Macaulay:

“Where there is a free press, the governors must live in constant awe of the opinions of the governed.”

Obama would have passed that quote carved into the wall each time he took elevator up to be praised by the Tribune’s editorial board. He must have snickered when he read it. He made a joke of it and turned into a punchline.

If anyone wants to trace the Decline of Trust in Legacy Media, it begins with the media love showered upon Barack Obama.

But he had a lot of help.

(Copyright 2025 John Kass)

 

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About the author: John Kass spent decades as a political writer and news columnist in Chicago working at a major metropolitan newspaper. He is co-host of The Chicago Way podcast. And he just loves his “No Chumbolone” hat, because johnkassnews.com is a “No Chumbolone” Zone where you can always get a cup of common sense.

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