Obama would like people to remember that 'nobody in my administration got indicted'
Former President Barack Obama got in a dig against President Trump on Tuesday, and he didn't even have to say his name.
Obama was at Rice University, attending a gala honoring the nonpartisan Baker Institute for Public Policy. He sat for a joint interview with the institute's namesake, former Secretary of State James Baker, moderated by presidential historian Jon Meacham. Baker had a long career in politics, working under Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and George W. Bush, and he remarked that he was most proud of not being indicted, The Houston Chronicle reports.
Obama then reminded the audience that "not only did I not get indicted, nobody in my administration got indicted. By the way, it was the only administration in modern history that that can be said about. In fact, nobody came close to being indicted, probably because the people who joined us were there for the right reasons." Several of Trump's former high-level advisers and associates, including onetime National Security Adviser Michael Flynn and campaign chairman Paul Manafort, have been indicted or pleaded guilty to charges.
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Baker and Obama also discussed how the political climate changed between the Reagan era and when Obama took office. Gerrymandering plays a role, Obama said, as well as the media landscape. During Reagan's time, "there was a common set of facts, a baseline," he said, and by 2009, "what you increasingly have is a media environment in which if you are a Fox News viewer, you have an entirely different reality than if you are a New York Times reader." Baker agreed, saying, "The responsible center in American politics has disappeared."
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Catherine Garcia is night editor for TheWeek.com. Her writing and reporting has appeared in Entertainment Weekly and EW.com, The New York Times, The Book of Jezebel, and other publications. A Southern California native, Catherine is a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
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