Fox & Friends freaks out over Obama commencement speech: “Barack Obama's not all that articulate”
Co-host Jedediah Bila: “You know, the more I listen to it, the weirder it gets, truly.”
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From the May 17, 2020, edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends
JEDEDIAH BILA (CO-HOST): You know, the more I listen to it, the weirder it gets, truly, to listen.
HEGSETH: Yeah.
BILA: This is a commencement speech. So when you first listen to it, you almost forget that it's a commencement speech and you say "Oh, this is President Obama, you know, giving some sort of political speech, you know, trying to say that the Trump administration is divisive and whatnot."
But then when you think about it, it's a commencement speech, it's supposed to be motivational, positive, it's supposed to be about the graduates. This was not the time for what he's doing. This was not the time to say, "Oh, this leadership isn't doing a great job" or, you know, "Adults don't always know what they do." It just seems so depressing, to be perfectly honest, and just so completely inappropriate for what a commencement speech is supposed to be. The more you listen to it, the weirder it gets.
GRIFF JENKINS (CO-HOST): Well, sure. It's certainly a missed opportunity, Jed, because here is the guy known as no-drama Obama, he always tried to remain above the fray --
PETE HEGSETH (CO-HOST): Oh, yeah.
JENKINS: We haven't heard much from him and the entire time and, look, President Trump has taken lots of shots at President Obama. We hear Obamagate all this past week. So this was the opportunity for Barack Obama to step into the void, get that soaring rhetoric that we remember and inspire these young graduates like my niece Marilyn, he graduated from Villanova this weekend, and say, "Listen, you guys were the strongest, you got us through this pandemic. You taught us how to go online and communicate, you taught how to zoom, build upon it, be a leader. Give me the high bar."
But instead, President Obama said "Thanks for the mic, let me take a crack at Trump."
HEGSETH: Yeah.
JENKINS: It's unbelievable, to fault a lack of leadership in a time of pandemic when the very people we will depend in the future on are being assailed with a political gotcha.
HEGSETH: And time and time again he talks like a typical leftist. "The people in charge." You know who's in charge? The people who elected supposedly public servants, yet these Democrat governors and people like Barack Obama feel, no, we're in charge, we're the experts, and Donald Trump's got it all wrong. It's amazing. And by the way, Barack Obama's not all that articulate. When he reads the off a teleprompter, he can be inspiring, or off of a speech, but when he's impromptu the "uhms" and the "ahs" it's like -- it's impossible to listen to.