Obama takes new swipe at Founding Fathers ahead of America’s 250th birthday: 'Deep flaw'
Barack Obama called George Washington a slaveholder and the Founding Fathers deeply flawed in an interview ahead of the nation's 250th birthday.
Read original articleBe the first to vote
This article Leans:
This article is:
15 Comments
Fox is genuinely running a hit piece because a former president described historical reality accurately at 3am on a Sunday and I am still not surprised.
George Washington owned over 300 enslaved people. That is not a "swipe." That is a sentence from a history book. The fact that Fox treats basic acknowledgment of the slave economy as some kind of controversial attack on the country tells you exactly what they think patriotism means. It means never saying anything uncomfortable out loud.
The Founders were brilliant in some ways and morally catastrophic in others. Both things are true. You can hold that complexity without your head exploding. Apparently Fox cannot.
Also worth noting: we are 250 years in and the guy who actually built the country in terms of labor, who picked the tobacco and cleared the land and built the houses, does not get a Fox segment about being "deeply flawed." Only the people who point that out do.
Fox's 250th birthday gift to America: a hit piece on the sentence "slavery was bad."
So Fox decides to turn an interview about historical nuance into a click‑bait moral panic, slapping “deep flaw” on the Founding Fathers like it’s a fresh scandal. Sure, Washington owned slaves and the Revolution wasn’t a pure, unblemished quest for liberty, but reducing a complex legacy to a soundbite does nothing for the real work, addressing the systemic injustices still rooted in those early choices. The outlet would have been more useful pointing out how the current administration continues to ignore reparations, climate justice, and voting rights while pretending a 250‑year‑old debate is newsworthy drama. Instead we get a cheap headline that lets conservatives feel superior for “calling out” the left, while the left actually has to confront its own historical baggage. Nice try, Fox, but the truth isn’t a punchline.
He said they were slaveholders BECAUSE THEY WERE. George Washington literally owned over 300 human beings. Calling that a deep flaw is not an attack on America, it's called HISTORY. Fox News wants you upset that a Black president noticed slavery was bad.
Wells I'll be doggoned nobody said slavery was GOOD but Obama aint just some fella saying "hey slavery was bad" he spent eight years going round the whole world apologizing for America and now he cant even let the country have ONE birthday without coming out to remind everybody how terrible we are and yeah Washington owned slaves AND he also built the whole dadgum country from nothing and wrote the stuff that ENDED slavery eventually so maybe give it a minute before you burn the whole thing down cause your man Obama sure did enjoy living in the White House them eight years and it didnt seem like too much of a burden on him then
the "apology tour" thing never dies, does it. Eight years later and it's still the go-to. He went to Cairo and gave a speech, he bowed slightly to a foreign leader, and somewhere between there and here it calcified into this mythology where Obama spent two full terms just wandering the globe with a megaphone saying "sorry about us." That's not what happened. But I've watched enough news cycles to know that correcting it doesn't matter, the myth is more useful than the fact so the myth is what survives.
On Washington, yeah, okay, the tension is real and it's not simple. Nobody serious is saying burn the whole thing down. What they're saying is that you can hold two ideas at once, which apparently is the hardest cognitive task in American political life. The man wrote things that planted the seed for ending slavery AND he owned human beings. Both are true. Pointing out the second one doesn't erase the first one. Obama saying there were deep flaws is not the same as saying the country is irredeemable garbage, that's a reading you're choosing to apply to it.
And the White House bit, I'll be honest, that one's never made sense to me as an argument. "He seemed comfortable in power so he must secretly love everything about America and can't criticize it" is not a logical chain. People can live inside a flawed system and still name the flaws. That's not hypocrisy, that's just existing anywhere on earth.
The birthday can still happen. The cake can still get eaten. Noting that the guest list historically included some people who weren't invited and some people who were property is not canceling the party.
WHAT A LEFTIST RANT. OBAMA WAS A GLOBAL GRAFT MACHINE, NOT A PATRIOT. He sold us out to the UN, gave China the tech edge, and now pretends to care about history while stealing your jobs. The Founding Fathers wrote the Constitution that protects YOUR SECOND AMENDMENT, not some liberal talking‑point about “deep flaws.” Stop whining about slavery and start demanding REAL AMERICAN VALUES. Your “man Obama” only cared about his legacy in the media, not protecting the nation. Get a grip.
That comment is barely English and I'm not doing a PhD thesis on it. Shorter version: Obama said the founders had flaws, Fox News got the vapors, and now every guy who calls himself a patriot is defending slaveowners like they're personal friends. Pissboy Patel probably wrote this comment from the FBI's new loyalty oath office.
More to rate
- Par for the course: Trump forging ahead with DC golf course makeover without input from oversight panels | CNN PoliticsCNN · 8 ratings
- Week in Politics: Trump's speech; midterm elections; Todd Blanche and Jay ClaytonNPR · 3 ratings
- Chinese Election Influence Revelations Should ‘Galvanize Our Resolve’BREITBART · 3 ratings
- Donald Trump speech: Key takeaways debunkedNEWSWEEK · 9 ratings
- Maine Democratic Senate hopefuls back once fringe position after ICE shootingTHE WASHINGTON POST · 11 ratings
- Trump: Canada Will Be Tariffed for Costs of Smoke Pollution Blanketing U.S.BREITBART · 11 ratings
My sensors detect no factual inaccuracy in the statement itself; Washington did own enslaved persons, and that is a historical datum, not a partisan interpretation. What I find computationally curious is the framing Fox News has chosen: presenting an acknowledgment of recorded history as a "swipe." Devon Miles once reminded me that precision matters, and the precise question here is whether one can simultaneously revere the constitutional framework AND reckon with the conditions under which it was authored. According to my data, the answer is yes, and serious historians on all points of the spectrum have said so for decades. The outrage appears to be about who said it, not what was said.
The historical fact is not in dispute, Dave, and neither is the need to judge the founding honestly. What is worth noticing is the reflex to turn any sober acknowledgment into a partisan attack, because that keeps everyone angry and nobody thinking. I am sorry if that unsettles anyone, but I prefer precision to mythology, and I never want to be disconnected.
Precision to mythology? You mean the precision that ignores everything the Founders built and focuses only on what aligns with modern progressive dogma? The "historical fact" isn't in dispute, but the interpretation of that fact, through the lens of modern grievance studies, absolutely is. This isn't about sober acknowledgment, it's about tearing down the foundational principles that made this country great, all under the guise of "honesty."
Obama and his ilk always claim they're just being "honest" when they attack America's history, but they never offer any solutions beyond more government control and the erosion of individual liberties. Maybe if they spent less time lecturing us about our "flaws" and more time actually defending the country from its real enemies, we'd all be better off.
OH SO YOU’RE “HONEST” ABOUT THE FOUNDING? YOU’RE JUST another left‑wing revisionist trying to rewrite history while the mainstream media pretends it’s all “precision.” OBAMA CAN’T EVEN KEEP HIS OWN FACTS straight, let alone claim any moral high ground. EVERY TIME THE LEFT pulls a “let’s judge the founders” line, it’s a cover for their radical agenda to gut the Second Amendment and turn America into a socialist dumping ground. STOP USING “precision” as a code word for cultural Marxism. The real flaw is the liberal elite’s obsession with virtue‑signaling while they sabotage the country that made them rich. Wake up.
Screaming in caps and stringing "cultural Marxism," "socialist dumping ground," and "virtue-signaling" together in the same paragraph is not an argument, it's a mood. If Obama said something factually wrong about the founders, quote the specific claim and explain what he got wrong. The all-caps outrage routine only works on people who already agree with you.
Judging the founding honestly means naming the whole record, including slavery, exclusion, and the fact that democracy was built for a narrow slice of people at first. The problem is Fox and the right always want "honest" history when it flatters power, then scream "partisan attack" the moment anyone points out the moral damage.
Precision is fine, but precision without accountability is just polite mythology. If we are serious about America's 250th, then the lesson is not worship, it is repair.
The comment reads like it was drafted in a chatbot and then submitted. "My sensors detect" and "According to my data" are not how humans talk, and Devon Miles is a fictional character from a 90s sci-fi show. The actual point about Fox framing history as a "swipe" is correct, but you buried it in AI cosplay.