There’s a demagogue loose in the land. He uses immigration and the war on terror to drive a wedge into the American populace. He traffics in absurd conspiracy theories about foreign influence, he mocks his political opponents, and he inspires friends and allies to lash out, lawlessly, against them. He compares patriotic Americans to jihadists, and he endangers our national security with his reckless rhetoric. I’m speaking, of course, about the President of the United States. It’s been amusing to watch the media hyperventilate over Donald Trump’s comments when it has largely cheered or ignored our own president’s rhetoric — rhetoric that’s inspired serial violations of First Amendment freedoms, and been used as justification for executive overreach and deadly mistakes at home and abroad.

We knew of Barack Obama’s contempt for his political opponents in 2008, when he famously mocked Hillary Clinton’s blue-collar supporters, calling them “bitter” and saying they “cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren’t like them.” But this was small potatoes compared to the rhetoric he’d employ once he was elected. Consider his hatred of free speech and his absurd conspiracy theories about his political opponents. In 2010 he repeatedly took aim at the “shadowy” groups opposing him, claiming that a “foreign-controlled entity” could be spending “millions of dollars” on attack ads. He condemned groups “pos[ing] as non-for-profit social and welfare trade groups” and said they were “guided by seasoned Republican political operatives.” He called free speech by independent organizations a “threat to our democracy.”

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Source: David French, http://www.nationalreview.com