If Obama had said this, conservatives would have gone ballistic

By Tom Quiner

Donald Trump is everything I expected him to be as president.

Is that good or bad? Yes.

He’s following through on many of his campaign promises. Good. And he’s as mercurial as ever. Bad. I had hoped he be a little more presidential, but that is evidently not in the cards for Mr. Trump.

He was interviewed by Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly and said something that about made me come out of my chair. O’Reilly labeled Vladimir Putin “a killer.” Trump quickly sprung to Putin’s address:

“We’ve got a lot of killers. What do you think? Our country’s so innocent?”

In my wildest imagination, dear readers, I can’t imagine even a leftist like Barack Obama ever saying something that denigrating about the United States of America. He took plenty of shots at our country on his ‘apology tour’ in his first term, making it clear that he didn’t consider America all that exceptional.

But Donald Trump’s put-down of American exceptionalism was Obama on steroids. Wall Street Journal columnist, Bret Stephens, characterized Trump’s remarks this way:

“This time, Mr. Trump didn’t apologize for America. He indicted it. He did so in language unprecedented for any sitting or former president. He did it in a manner guaranteed, and perhaps calculated, to vindicate every hard-left slander of “Amerika.” If you are the sort who believes the CIA assassinated JFK, masterminded the crack-cocaine epidemic, and deliberately lied us into the war in Iraq—conspiracy theories on a moral par with the way the Putin regime behaves in actual fact—then this president is for you.”

Be very careful with this president, conservatives.