Bill Press was back on The Drive last Friday. The author and syndicated radio host told Steve Jaxon about appearances in Point Reyes and Corte Madera, to promote his new book, Buyer’s Remorse, How Obama Let Progressives Down.
Bill Press
Steve began by quoting Bill Press from thehill.com. “…you wrote, and I quote, ‘As an out of body experience, it’s hard to beat, sitting on the couch watching the Sunday morning shows, when suddenly you hear Chuck Todd and George Stephanopoulos hammer Bernie Sanders about a blurb he wrote for the cover of your new book. And he does. He says, Bill Press makes the case. Read this book.’ How did you deal with that?”
Bill laughed and said, “Well, the biggest grief of all that he got, I was actually on the set in New York with Anderson Cooper during one of the Democratic debates shortly after those two Sunday shows, and Hillary Clinton turned to Bernie Sanders and accused him of writing the forward actually to my book, to this book called Buyer’s Remorse. You talk about an out-of-body experience! Or an Oh Crap experience!”
“As to how I reacted, I don’t know whether to be angry at Hillary for misrepresenting what Bernie’s done, or whether I should send her flowers or a fruitcake or something, because it certainly helped sales. I will be forever grateful.”
Steve asked Bill to explain the book’s premise, asking, “You have said that your goal in writing this was simply to tell the truth, because you’ve said before on this show, and others, that Obama has done a lot of good things. Explain the remorse part.”
Bill replied, “I’m glad you pointed that out because I think the book is very fair. I talk about all the good things that he has done, we could go down the list. You and I have talked about a lot of them. The most recent for me is his trip to Cuba and opening up relations with Cuba. Long, long, long overdue and nobody had the guts to do it before Obama. I think it’s going to be one of the signature foreign policy achievements not just of his administration but of any modern president.
“But where I think he has let us down in several ways and a couple of things pop into my head. It’s letting Wall Street completely off the hook. These crooks on Wall Street, they were selling fraudulent investment opportunities and they knew they were and they knew they were worthless, these derivatives, and they brought this country to the brink of economic ruin. Not one of them was prosecuted, not one of them went to jail. President Obama just decided he wasn’t going to go there. As a consequence we’ve got millions and millions of Americans who lost their shirt, and they’re still struggling to get back, loss of retirement benefits, and so many people who are working two, three jobs just to pay their bills at the end of the month. And these… I want to be careful here… these crooks on Wall Street, they’re still there, they’re making more money than ever before and they just got away scott free and I was disappointed with President Obama.
“…we’ve got to make sure they really do deliver on the progressive agenda, whether it’s Hillary or Bernie.”
“I was disappointed when he walked into the White House briefing room one day when I was there and said, ‘Hey, I’ve just made a deal with John Boehner, we’re going to cut Social Security benefits and we’re going to cut Medicare.’ Well, fortunately that deal unraveled, but it wasn’t what we expected from him.
“And I think the third thing I get to is the NSA and the spying on us, on our phones and on our emails. It’s out of bounds. President Obama, when he was a Senator, he and Ron Wyden from Oregon were the two chief critics of the NSA at the time. And when he was campaigning he said,'”we’re going to stop this practice, we’re going to rein in the intelligence agencies.’ And instead once he became President, President Obama just looked the other way. And these guys are out of control today.
“The main point of my book is, looking ahead, we’re going to have Hillary or Bernie as the next President of the United States, and the point I make in the book is, we have to do our job the next time. Elect one of these great people, then, don’t walk away and say, ‘OK, you’re on your own, have a good time.’ No. We have to keep on their butt and we have to hold their feet to the fire and we’ve got to make sure they really do deliver on the progressive agenda, whether it’s Hillary or Bernie.”