Flashback: After Obama Says Fox News Viewers 'Live on a Different Planet' Newt Calls Him Out for 'Fantasy'
Editor’s Note: Our readers responded strongly to this story when it originally ran; we’re re-posting it here in case you missed it.
Newt Gingrich issued a scathing response to former President Barack Obama’s assertion that Fox News viewers live on a “different planet” than consumers of NPR and other left-wing news outlets.
Speaking with Fox News‘ Sean Hannity, the former Speaker of the House of Representatives said it will be Obama who, many years from now, will still be living in a fantasy world, convinced that his policies in the White House were a success.
“I listened to (Obama’s comments) and I thought to myself, ‘This guy is so whacked,'” Gingrich stated, adding that the former Democratic president still doesn’t “get it.”
“Many, many years from now in a nursing home, or a nice retirement community, Barack Obama will be still living in a fantasy life. He’ll think that Iran really wanted to have a deal, he’ll think that high taxes really work, he’ll think that welfare’s a good deal.”
The former Republican lawmaker continued to hammer Obama, suggesting that it is he — not Fox viewers — who is out of touch with reality.
Hannity, a mainstay of Fox News, went on to criticize the mainstream media for their coverage of the Trump White House and alleged Russian collusion, calling them out for living outside the realm of reality where no definitive proof has surfaced to prove there was any sort of collusion between Trump’s presidential campaign and Russia.
Gingrich, who is currently writing a book titled, “Trump’s America” offered an explanation for the major divide in news coverage.
“Over here is a left-wing, corrupt establishment which sincerely sees this fight as a function of identity politics in which if they lose, they will disappear,” he said, using his hands to differentiate between points.
“Over here are the rest of us who are thinking, ‘A lot of these ideas are really weird,'” adding that Americans can’t relate to Obama’s line of thinking for the Iran Deal and other progressive positions while in the White House.
Obama’s comments came while he was a guest for David Letterman’s new Netflix series, “My Next Guest Needs No Introduction with David Letterman,” which debuted on Friday.
In the episode, Letterman asked the former president what he considered a larger threat to democracy, the president maligning the press or foreign agents involving themselves in an election process — both options were not-so-subtle jabs at President Donald Trump.
Obama, who has been a critic of Fox in the past, was happy to oblige.
“One of the biggest challenges we have to our democracy is the degree to which we don’t share a common baseline of facts,” he said, according to The Hill. “If you watch Fox News, you are living on a different planet than you are if you are listening to NPR.”
The line drew resounding applause from the left-wing crowd at City College of New York.
Obama’s swipe at Fox News was the first time the retired president has spoken about the right-leaning network since leaving the White House, having stayed mostly out of the spotlight last year.
The former president, however, has spoken against their coverage of him in the past, at one time saying he wouldn’t vote for himself if he watched the network.
Truth and Accuracy
We are committed to truth and accuracy in all of our journalism. Read our editorial standards.
Advertise with The Western Journal and reach millions of highly engaged readers, while supporting our work. Advertise Today.
