Someone finally said it. Someone finally contrasted the great privilege afforded to former president Donald Trump that would not have been afforded to former president Barack Obama had Obama been caught on tape demanding a Secretary of State overturn an election for him.
“(I)f Barack Obama had been caught on tape calling the secretary of state, asking him to look for votes to overturn a duly executed election, he would be indicted, he would have been indicted immediately. He would have been arrested,” Kendra Cotton said on MSNBC Saturday night.
Watch here:
Kendra Cotton, New Georgia Action Fund CEO, "If Barack Obama had been caught on tape calling the secretary of state, asking him to look for votes to overturn a duly executed election, he would be indicted, he would have been indicted immediately. He would have been arrested." pic.twitter.com/PcKWRkUOiy
— Sarah Reese Jones (@PoliticusSarah) August 20, 2023
Kendra Cotton the New Georgia Action Fund CEO said on MSNBC:
And I know we talked about, oh, is there a difference for presidents? No there is not. Because what I know, and every black and brown person knows in this country, that if Barack Obama had been caught on tape called the secretary of state, asking him to look for votes to overturn a duly executed election, he would be indicted, he would have been indicted immediately. He would have been arrested.
And so, I am just so proud to be in Georgia right now. I am proud that D.A. Willis has said her ego aside. She is not concerned about the aspersions being cast. This man got on social media and said that she was sleeping with a gang member. There is no low. There is nothing too low for him. And so this is something that we Georgians feel like is just a little bit of retribution.
Cotton is sadly absolutely correct. The United States suffers from an justice system that systemically privileges the people who most look like the elite in that same system. If Barack Obama had tried to shake down a Democratic Secretary of State to “find” votes for him in a state he lost and there were tapes, Republicans wouldn’t have wasted a moment before locking him up. There wouldn’t have been any of the pearl clutching we see going on now even after four indictments against Trump at the mere notion that he might be held accountable.
While this is primarily an issue of race that is reflected throughout our “justice” system from policing to the courts to the prisons, it’s also a function of the way Republicans don’t hold their side accountable for anything (see also: Republican Rep. George Santos), while simultaneously calling for the maximum punishment against their political opponents.
The Hunter Biden case is an example of this. Republicans have latched on to Hunter Biden because they can’t find any dirt on the actual president. When they finally found some on his son, who certainly has his own issues but has never worked in the White House, they pressured the prosecutor until Hunter Biden made a deal that was “harsher” than most (see: Republican Roger Stone’s willful evasion of taxes including during the Trump administration).
Andrew Weissman said of Hunter Biden’s plea deal: “Both of these types of crimes are generally not prosecuted at all or treated in incredibly lenient fashion. Should that be the case? That’s a legitimate debatable question about how these cases should be treated…And it’s one that if anything, seemed a little bit harsher than what I would typically expect.”
So, it’s normally not prosecuted, but they prosecuted Hunter Biden for it. On the flip side, Donald Trump was not prosecuted for years for criminal actions he took against this country and its voters and many political pundits are still arguing that he should not be prosecuted today– for alleged crimes that anyone else would have been prosecuted for. Pundits say it’s divisive to prosecute Trump. (I’m betting some of them were the same people saying Obama was “divisive” racially, instead of pointing out that it was some white people’s reaction to Obama’s race that was divisive.)
At any rate, Hunter Biden’s deal fell apart. Former DOJ IG, Assistant US Attorney of the Southern District of new York and Associate Independent Counsel Michael R. Bromwich pointed out over this New York Times article, “This chronicles a case of gross prosecutorial malpractice by Weiss —conducting an endless investigation, succumbing to political pressure, failing to manage investigators, moving the goalposts for disposing of the case. Embarrassing.”
Back to the racial issue, which is a predominate theme of the entire attempt to steal the 2020 election (and we see Trump playing with this using racially coded language to continue falsely suggesting that Black people somehow stole this election from him by voting), Black women working as election volunteers and Black voters were targeted relentlessly by Team Trump. Yet, as I wrote the day after Trump’s Georgia indictment, no one talks about how lawful those voters and workers were even while being falsely accused and maligned publicly.
Contrast that with how Trump voters are treated after trying to intimidate other voters from voting, threatening multiple officials, attacking the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to stop the peaceful transfer of power — and still they aren’t referred to as “thugs.” The 1/6 terrorists were allowed to walk out of the building. The racial double standard is obvious and it is an indictment of our culture as well as our legal system.
Had Barack Obama ever threatened a Secretary of State — and there were TAPES — he would have been tossed in jail faster than we can even imagine.
Meanwhile, Donald Trump is out here inciting his base to threaten jurors, judges, and he’s contaminating jury pools and threatening prosecutors and witnesses. He is, naturally, not in jail. Even after all of this.
Although, that might possibly soon change.
Sarah has been credentialed to cover President Barack Obama, then VP Joe Biden, 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, and exclusively interviewed Speaker Nancy Pelosi multiple times and exclusively covered her first home appearance after the first impeachment of then President Donald Trump.
Sarah is two-time Telly award winning video producer and a member of the Society of Professional Journalists.
Connect with Sarah on Post, Mastodon @PoliticusSarah@Journa.Host, & Twitter.
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