Mediaboss Marketing

Former President Barack Obama is expected to "re-emerge" into the national political scene later this fall in order to help Democrats rebuild their party after losing the White House last year.

In the next few weeks, aides close to the former president will begin mapping out a strategy for him to begin taking a more active role in Democratic party politics, especially fundraising.

The strategy comes with some political risk, however. If the former president engages too heavily in current political matters and gains some of the spotlight, it could allow President Trump to build energy and momentum with his base by turning his attacks on Obama.

"He'll tread lightly because [Obama] is not going to be the face of the party when it actually counts in 2020 and 2024," Cal Jillson, a professor of political science at Southern Methodist University, told The Hill.

"So the extent to which he would emerge and speak to a wide range of issues would preclude the emergence of someone else," Jillson added. "They must find a standard-bearer for future elections, and I think he can at least in the short term suck up all the available oxygen."

Obama has reportedly been holding one-on-one meetings with top Democratic elected officials, and numerous phone calls with Democratic Party Chairman Tom Perez.

Obama's clout and expertise might be most welcome in fundraising where recently the GOP has been handily beating Democrats when comparing the national committees. In June, the GOP national committee hauled in $13.5 million compared to the Democrats' $5.5 million.

As the Washington Examiner's Byron York wrote:

A look inside the numbers is even worse for the DNC. Looking at collections from small donors that is, those who contributed less than $200 the RNC raised $10.5 million in the months of May and June. The DNC raised $5.3 million from small donors in the same time period. The RNC's money total is a record more than was raised in any previous non-presidential election year. That is true for June, and for all of 2017 as well. The $75.4 million raised this year compares to $55.4 million for the same period in 2015; to $51.2 for the same period in 2014; to $41.1 million for the same period in 2013, and so on going back. "It's definitely a reflection of support for President Trump," said RNC spokesman Ryan Mahoney. "Our small-dollar donors are giving at a record pace because they believe the RNC is supporting President Trump, and they like that."

Other parts of the Democrats' strategy include using the former president's popularity to drive out attendance at rallies for local Democrat candidates. For example, Obama is already known to have committed to helping Virginia gubernatorial candidate Ralph Northam.

See more here:
Obama returns to help Democrats starting in the fall - Washington Examiner

The president claimed federal drug prosecutions are down. That's true, but he left out key context. (Meg Kelly/The Washington Post)

Federal drug prosecutions have gone down in recent years. Were going to be bringing them up and bringing them up rapidly. At the end of 2016, there were 23 percent fewer than in 2011. So they looked at this scourge and they let it go by, and were not letting it go by. President Trump, remarks before a briefing on the opioid epidemic, Aug. 8, 2017

President Trump who two days after this briefing said he would declare the opioid epidemic to be a national emergency not so subtly tried to pin the blame on the Obama administration. They looked at this scourge and they let it go by, the president said, citing statistics that federal drug prosecutions have declined 23 percent since 2011.

But theres a problem: These stats dont tell you much about opioids.

The White House did not respond to a query, but the president appears to be referring to a March report by the Pew Research Center. That study showed that federal criminal prosecutions of all types reached a peak in 2011 and had fallen to the lowest level in two decades. As the president said, drug charges fell by 23 percent, with 24,638 defendants in fiscal 2016, compared with32,062 in fiscal year 2011.

To fairly compare what happened under the Obama administration, wed have to go back to 2008, President George W. Bushs last year. From fiscal 2008 to 2016, drug prosecutions dropped 15 percent.

But these numbers are for all drug prosecutions and the data does not break out opioid-related prosecutions. Instead, the data shows only two categories: marijuana and then all other drugs. Because marijuana was legalized in some states during President Barack Obamas term, marijuana prosecutions fell 39 percent from 2011 to 2016. Without marijuana in the totals, the decline for drug prosecutions between 2011 and 2016 is 18 percent.

In 2013, for example, after two states legalized the recreational use of marijuana, the department announced new charging priorities for offenses involving the drug, which remains illegal under federal law, the Pew report noted. That same year, Pew noted, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. announced a policy change that prosecutors make sure each case serves a substantial federal interest, a reason overall federal prosecutions may have fallen. Under the Smart on Crime Initiative, prosecutors were told to focus finite resources on more serious drug cases and leave low-level offenders to state prosecutors. (Many drug cases are handled in state courts, and there is even less data on that.)

The data dont specifically break out opioid prosecutions, so theres no way to know what happened on that front, said John Gramlich, who wrote the Pew report.

Trumps statistic thus does not really tell you much about Obamas handling of opioids. Our colleagues at FactCheck.org cited data from the U.S. Sentencing Commission which shows how many people were actually sentenced for drug crimes that indicates Trump is falsely attacking the former president.

Again, there are not good breakdowns for opioids. But there is data for heroin, which shows the number of people who were sentenced for federal heroin offenses rose by 56 percent from fiscal 2011 to 2016. Separately, the number of people convicted of trafficking in oxycodone rose sharply from 2008 to 2014, before falling in 2015 and 2016. But there isnt data on other crimes involving oxycodone, hydrocodone or fentanyl.

Obamas handling of the crisis is certainly open to criticism. If Trump wanted to be specific, he could have cited a Washington Post investigationthat showed the Drug Enforcement Administration, under pressure from drug companies, softened enforcement of wholesale companies that distributed pills to the corrupt pharmacies that illegally sold the drugs for street use.

The jury is still out on whether Trump can improve on Obamas numbers. In a report released July 27,the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University said that drug prosecutions have continued to decline during the first five months of the Trump administration, so that fewer drug offenders were federally prosecuted over the past 12 months than at any time during the last quarter century.

This is a good example of data being used incorrectly. Federal prosecutions have gone down since 2011, but that does not indicate that the Obama administration ignored the opioid epidemic. The number cited by Trump was the result of a decline in marijuana prosecutions and a change in policy to focus on bigger, more important cases. Moreover, there is notenough detailin the data to show whether opioid prosecutions declined, as Trump suggested.

(About our rating scale)

Send us facts to check by filling out this form

Keep tabs on Trumps promises with our Trump Promise Tracker

Sign up for The Fact Checker weekly newsletter

Do you rate this claim as true or false? More Pinocchios for false, fewer based on your opinion of the statement's truthfulness. (The check mark means you think the statement is true, not that you agree with the rating.)

We need to verify that you are an actual person.

This is a non-scientific user poll. Results are not statistically valid and cannot be assumed to reflect the views of Washington Post users as a group or the general population.

Share the Facts

2017-08-11 10:54:47 UTC

3

1

5

Two Pinocchios

"At the end of 2016, there were 23 percent fewer [federal prosecutions] than in 2011. So they looked at this scourge and they let it go by."

before a briefing on the opioid epidemic

Tuesday, August 8, 2017

2017-08-08

Read the original post:
Trump's effort to blame Obama for the opioid epidemic - Washington Post

Anthony Anderson says a trash-talking former President Obama raked it in recently after winning a golf bet against him, Chris Paul and Michael Phelps.

"President Obama talked trash all day. Five and a half hours, nothing but trash talk," Anderson told Jimmy Fallon during a Thursday appearance on NBC's "The Tonight Show."

The "Black-ish" star revealed he recently hit the links with Obama, Houston Rockets player Paul and Olympian Phelps.

"He won," Anderson, 46, said of the ex-commander in chief. Praising Obama's golf game, the actor said: "He's a great golfer. Doesn't hit the ball long off the tee, but he's straight as an arrow."

Former first lady Michelle ObamaMichelle ObamaFormer Michelle Obama aide enters Maryland governor's race Will Smith: Obama said I 'have the ears' to play him in a movie Knicks hire Michelle Obamas brother: report MORE has previously spoken of her husband's penchant for some putting-time trash talk. During an appearance on "Ellen" last year, sheadvised NBA star Stephen Curry that he shouldn't stay silent on the golf course with her spouse.

"You should trash talk back, Steph," shesaid. "Talk about his ears. If you're putting, you wanna say, 'The shadow from your ears is really messing up my putt.' Try that one."

Anderson claimed that after winning the game, Obama, 56, made sure his golf buddies coughed up some cold, hard cash.

"He took $700 from Phelps, he took $600 from Chris Paul, he took $300 from me," Anderson said to laughs. "I was like, man, is this even right? I was like, you're the president, here. Can you take money from civilians?"

Anderson said Obama replied: "Anthony, I'm a civilian now. So yes, I can take it."

"He talked trash all day," said Anderson. "And took all of our money."

See more here:
Obama talked trash, won money from 3 celebs over golf game - The Hill (blog)

Former President Barack Obama plans to resurface on to the national scene this fall, albeit slowly, according to The Hill.

In the next few weeks, Obama and his staff will strategize a way allowing him to be part of the political conversation, while not making him the loudest voice in the party.

Aides say his role is to be more behind the scenes than anything else, in terms of fundraising for example, as opposed to a front man.

The Hill notes Obama has already given advice to the party since its devastating 2016 presidential loss, and he met with Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez last July.

However, Obamas re-emergence to the national scene, described as a delicate dance, may not be completely welcomed and could backfire.

Past presidents traditionally leave Washington and do not involve themselves in the national political scene, often opting to involve themselves in charity work and speaking engagements.

However, President Obamas younger age, as opposed to most former presidents, as well as his history of a political community organizing sets him up to continue work for the Democrats for years to come. His renewed public presence could reenergize Republicans and conservatives who feel Trump is not being treated fairly by the media.

He has to be careful, Julian Zelizer, a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University told The Hill. At a moment when President Trumps approval is falling so fastincluding with his basethere is a risk for Obama taking center stage and triggering the energy that many Republicans currently lack.

President Obama could begin his journey in the public eye by campaigning for Democrat Ralph Northams run for Virginia governor. (RELATED: Obama Going Back To Campaigning Months After Leaving Office)

David Turner, a campaign spokesman for the Northam camp, told The Washington Post last June that Obama promised to campaign for Northman in the state that the former president won in 2008 and 2012.

Follow Kerry on Twitter

Go here to read the rest:
Obama Plans On Stepping Back Into National Spotlight - The Daily Caller

"What's your judgment as to the chances they'll fire these things off?" Kennedy asked Dwight Eisenhower, a retired Army general whom he'd once derided as a "cold bastard."

Now, as North Korea presents fresh nuclear danger, those types of consultations appear to be history.

President Donald Trump, six months into his presidency and facing simmering tensions in Asia, has not only ignored his predecessors, he's rekindled his deep-seeded animosity for the man who handed him the nuclear codes.

This week, as Pyongyang issued threats to launch missiles at Guam, Trump retweeted a series of messages that criticized Obama, including an unscientific Twitter poll that had been inactive for days.

"Who is a better President of the United States," the poll asked, using the hashtag #ObamaDay to note that the state of Illinois will now mark August 4, the former president's birthday, as Barack Obama Day.

Trump also retweeted two messages on Wednesday evening, one from a Fox News show and another from John Bolton, a former ambassador to the United Nations, that knocked Obama.

Their spat is conducted from afar; Trump has not spoken with Obama since the pair parted ways on January 20. Before that, their face-to-face conversations were limited to a meeting in the Oval Office and pleasantries over coffee ahead of Trump's swearing-in.

Trump's tussles this week with an increasingly hostile North Korea only serve as a reminder of those brief conversations with Obama. In the Oval Office the week he won, Obama warned North Korea would present Trump with his gravest global challenge. Trump later suggested he and Obama discussed the matter further during a shared limousine ride from the White House to the US Capitol on Inauguration Day.

It was the last time they spoke.

"This President has a very unusual obsession with his predecessor and constantly comparing himself to President Obama," Derek Chollet, former assistant defense secretary under Obama. "This is not a president who seems to be singularly focused on what is a genuinely a global security threat in North Korea."

"I think he has got to be shaking his head," Chollet said of the former president. "Clearly, he tried in raising this issue with President Trump by singling it out in their meeting in the Oval Office last year."

Speaking from his golf club here on Thursday, Trump maligned Obama's stance on North Korea, suggesting Obama had ignored an issue that he is intent on confronting.

"You look what happened with Obama. Obama -- he didn't even want to talk about it. But I talk," Trump said on the steps of his clubhouse. "It's about time. Somebody has to do it. Somebody has to do it."

Much of Trump's initial governing agenda has focused on reversing Obama's legacy, either on climate change or trade or diplomatic relations with Cuba.

Trump has grown frustrated in areas he hasn't been able to separate himself from his predecessor, according to a senior administration official. He's lashed out at his national security council for presenting strategies in Afghanistan and against ISIS that aren't markedly different from the previous administration's. When his team insisted he re-certify Iran's compliance with the multi-nation nuclear deal, Trump balked and took the disagreement public.

Obama, it seems, is never far from Trump's mind, at least based on his public comments and his statements on Twitter.

"I inherited a mess," Trump said in February during the only solo press conference of his presidency. "It's a mess. At home and abroad, a mess."

Abroad, too, Trump has slammed Obama.

Standing next to Polish President Andrzej Duda, Trump blamed Obama for Russia's meddling in the 2016 election, saying that he did nothing to counter their attempt to help Trump and damage Clinton.

"Barack Obama, when he was president, found out about this, in terms of whether it was Russia, found out about it in August," Trump said. "Now the election was in November. That's a lot of time. He did nothing about it."

Trump's disdain for Obama, according to those close to him, was cemented when the then-President took aim at the reality TV star during the 2011 White House Correspondents' Dinner, mocking Trump as a conspiracy theorist whose most consequential decisions are whether to fire people on his TV show.

Omarosa Manigault, a former contestant on NBC's "The Apprentice," Trump's reality show, told PBS in 2016 that she thought at that time that Obama was "starting something that I don't know if he'll be able to finish" by publicly slamming Trump during that event.

Manigault, now a White House aide, said "every critic, every detractor, will have to bow down to President Trump" when he wins.

"It's everyone who's ever doubted Donald, who ever disagreed, who ever challenged him," she said. "It is the ultimate revenge to become the most powerful man in the universe."

See the rest here:
200 days in: Obama still on Trump's mind - CNN