Obama ignores Jackson family’s wishes at memorial

ANALYSIS:

The death of the Rev. Jesse Jackson produced the unexpected: a public split between two of Chicago’s most prominent Democratic figures.

The day after Mr. Jackson’s death, on February 17, his son, Jesse Jr., appeared with other family members outside the civil rights icon’s Chicago home.

Mr. Jackson Jr., a former congressman who is now running to reclaim Illinois’ 2nd District seat, praised his 84-year-old father. And he set the rules for a series of upcoming commemorations, saying services should be nonpartisan and free of politics.

“Don’t air your politics out of respect for Rev. Jesse Jackson and the life he lived, at these homecoming services,” the son said. “These homecoming services are welcome to everyone: Democrats, Republicans, liberals and conservatives, right, left, because his life is broad enough to cover the full spectrum of what it means to be an American. »

(“Homegoing” is an African-American Christian service aimed at bringing the deceased back to God.)

Former President Barack Obama, who spoke on March 6 while former Presidents Bill Clinton and Joseph R. Biden sat in the front row, either ignored or did not receive Jackson Jr.’s warning. Mr. Obama delivered a controversial condemnation of President Trump, calling America under siege by MAGA on all fronts.

The next day, Mr. Jackson Jr. reprimanded him.

“Yesterday I listened for several hours to three American presidents who don’t know Jesse Jackson,” he said at a second memorial service, this one at the Rainbow Push Coalition headquarters in Chicago.

“He maintained a strained relationship with the political order, not because the presidents were white or black, but the demands of our message, the demand to speak for the least among them – the disenfranchised, the damned, the dispossessed, the disrespected – did not demand Democratic or Republican solutions, but demanded a coherent and prophetic voice that at no time betrayed us as a people,” he said. declared, according to the New York Post.

Mr. Jackson Jr. was really talking about just one former president: Mr. Obama. The other two men mostly stuck to the script.

The day before, at the House of Hope convention center, Mr. Obama praised the life of Rev. Jackson. But as he finished, the former president diverted down another path. He launched a harsh attack on Mr. Trump, whom he described not by name but as “those who hold high office.” Trump America, he said, sponsors lawlessness, intimidation, intolerance, greed and corruption.

Mr. Obama said: “We live in a time when it can be difficult to have hope. Every day we wake up to see new attacks on our democratic institutions. Another setback to the idea of the rule of law. An offense to common decency. Every day you wake up to things you simply didn’t think were possible. Every day those in high office tell us to fear each other and turn against each other. And that some Americans matter more than others. And that some Americans don’t even matter. Everywhere we see greed and intolerance celebrated, and intimidation and mockery masquerading as strength.

And, he said, “We see science and expertise denigrated while ignorance, dishonesty, cruelty and corruption reap untold rewards every day. We see it. And it is difficult to hope in times like these. So it can be tempting to become discouraged. honest people, maybe just put your head down and wait for the storm to pass.” (Mr. Trump’s exit in 2029, I guess.)

Conservatives denounced Mr. Obama’s strident remarks.

“If you want to know why Donald Trump was elected, watch Barack Obama’s attack speech yesterday at Jesse Jackson’s funeral,” Ari Fleischer, press secretary for President George W. Bush, said on United States, except that it is celebrated by the mainstream media. [mainstream media] because they are partisan. They take sides, love and protect Obama.”

You can understand why conservatives are crazy. Anyone who has watched left-wing violence, including assassinations, unfold in recent years, and Democrats sometimes seeming to encourage it, would wonder who is really pitting Americans against each other?

Mr. Biden left Mr. Trump the legacy of an open southern border across which Mexican drug cartels pushed millions of people we knew nothing about. Thousands, I estimate, are criminals, given the number of murders, vehicular homicides, rapes, child rapes, thefts and frauds reported daily. You can read about it in local news reports, not the liberal media.

Why would a president do this to Americans and why shouldn’t Mr. Trump make the decision to arrest and deport them?

Tulsi Gabbard, Mr. Trump’s director of national intelligence, opened a new chapter in the Democrats’ Russia hoax from 2016 to 2018. She recounted how Mr. Obama and his aides, after Mr. Trump’s election victory, concocted a plan to release a report claiming that Russian President Vladimir Putin favored electing the new president. Ms. Gabbard revealed for the first time that Obama’s intelligence community assessment relied on Hillary Clinton’s fake campaign dossier to make Putin’s allegations.

“These documents detail a treacherous conspiracy by officials at the highest levels of the Obama White House to subvert the will of the American people and attempt to usurp the President in office,” Gabbard said in July.

Has there ever been a new American president who was more sabotaged before his inauguration day by the outgoing president and his co-conspirators?

A subplot in Jesse Jackson’s memorial service. The family invited Mr. Biden to attend. He gave a speech mostly about himself, but briefly attacked Mr. Trump.

Jesse Jackson Jr. resigned as a congressman in 2012 and served time in prison for corruption. As Mr. Biden left office, the senior Jackson asked the president for a pardon for his son. Mr. Biden has pardoned thousands of people and issued preemptive pardons to his family, including his son Hunter and his brother James. But he did not pardon Democrat Jesse Jackson Jr.

“Of course I am disappointed. Democrats had the opportunity to end the felonization of thousands, if not millions, of American citizens who have served their sentences. The fight for the American criminal, of which I am a part, must continue,” Mr. Jackson Jr. said in a statement on the day of Mr. Trump’s inauguration in 2025.

In the same statement, Mr. Jackson Jr. suggested that he deserved a pardon as someone who had paid his debt to society.