Obama Pretends To Be Shocked At How Horrible Republicans Have Become

During a recent interview with CNN, former President Barack Obama said that he can't believe how far the Republican Party has fallen and the fact that they have allowed these "dark spirits" to take them over. This is an incredibly naive comment from the former President who suffered through more phony scandals and attacks from rabid Republicans than any President in modern history. Ring of Fire's Farron Cousins discusses this.

Become a member today!

Support us by becoming a monthly patron on Patreon, and help keep progressive media alive!

Find our merchandise at Teespring

Spread the word! LIKE and SHARE this video or leave a comment to help direct attention to the stories that matter. And SUBSCRIBE to stay connected with Ring of Fire's video content!

Support Ring of Fire by subscribing to our YouTube channel

Be sociable! Follow us on:

Follow more of our stories at

Subscribe to our podcast

*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

During a recent interview with CNN, Obama naively acted like he was shocked that the Republican party has gotten so darn extreme and as he put it, you know, the dark spirits have taken over the Republican party. Here's just a couple of quotes of what he said. We have to worry when one of our major political parties is willing to embrace a way of thinking about our democracy that would be unrecognizable and unacceptable even five years ago or a decade ago. Unrecognizable, right? Eh. I didn't expect that there would be so few people who would say, well, I don't mind losing my office because this is too important, America's too important, our democracy is too important, but we didn't see that. Never thought that the dark spirits he witnessed forming within the GOP over his two terms as president would take over the party. Really?

Like, honestly, that, that's been my reaction to this entire story every time I've read it. Really? You didn't see this happening? You of all people didn't see this happening? Either you weren't paying attention or you're being intentionally obtuse about it. You knew what was happening with the Republican party. Stop trying to act like five years ago or ten years ago, this would be unrecognized. No, five years and ten years ago, they were still a bunch of. They were. They were. They were. They were whatever you want to call them. They were still all those things that only happened behind closed doors, though. They still hated the government. We still had violent right-wingers committing atrocities here in the United States, sometimes against the federal government or against state governments. That's not even new. So stop acting like this, oh, it's just a Trump thing. When Trump came along, everything went to hell.

No it didn't. I mean, do you not remember Obama? I mean, hell I still see it on social media today. People accusing your wife of secretly being a man. You know, the fast and furious scandal that they investigated forever and ever, and ever, and ever, and ever and couldn't find anything to prosecute you on. Dozens and dozens of times, members of the House of Representatives during the Obama administration actually introduced articles of impeachment. They never went anywhere, but there were more than two dozen attempts to impeach Barack Obama by Republicans while he was president. And you think just suddenly they've gotten bad. No, man, it's been this way. It's been this way. It's just in some certain areas, particularly with the, they were never this overt with it.

But that's what drove most of the hatred towards you. But honestly guys, I'm sick and tired of everybody acting like the Republican party suddenly went to hell when Donald Trump took over. It didn't. They were already in hell. He just showed them around the place a little bit. He's not the worst the Republican party has ever had. He's not the worst the Republican party will ever have. He's not the cause of their problems. He's a symptom of what they were becoming. So let's stop pretending that all the problems originate and center around Donald Trump, plenty of them do. But the Republican party was pure garbage before Donald Trump came along too.