Columbia University Alumni

"But there are some moments I don't think you can ever predict, the kind where you can't really believe it's happening the whole time it's happening. That would definitely be the way to describe the one-in-a-lifetime opportunity I had on Sunday, March 31, 2013. It was the annual Easter Egg roll at the White House, and I had been invited to perform. I wasn't sure if we'd get to meet the First Family, and I figured even if we didn't, it would still be a day I'd remember forever. And then we were actually asked to go back and meet them. Just imagine how many people want to hang with the president of the United States of America. The line was moving so slowly that it was looking like I wasn't going to get to meet the president after all because I needed to go get ready to perform. I was pretty disappointed. And then I was brought to the front of the line so I could run off afterward and sing for everyone. I could hardly believe it. I got a picture with the president, his family, and my mom. He and his entire family were all so nice."

"If you want to ignite race riots, a sure-fire way to do it is to stir up black hatred and suspicion of cops, which will in turn make cops warier of blacks and more trigger-happy, and so on, until an explosion occurs. So thanks, President Obama. You have set back American race relations by 50 years."

"Senator Obama made time to go to the gym but canceled a visit with wounded troops. It seems the Pentagon wouldn't allow him to bring cameras."

"Even though we would have preferred to win, all of us in the room understood that the country would be in the hands of an honorable man."

"[Obama was] really everything the American public would expect from their national leadership. The President was at all times presidential. I would contend he was the smartest guy in the room. He had leadership skills we'd expect from a guy who had 35 years in the military."

"I am very proud as an American to have a black president. I was born and raised in America. I am a part of a minority. To see a minority representative being the president of the United States of America is extremely inspiring. It's just miraculous."

"he's so brilliant"

"[Obama is] rare kind of attuned being who has the ability to lead us not merely to new foreign policies or health care plans or whatnot, but who can actually help usher in a new way of being on the planet, of relating and connecting and engaging with this bizarre earthly experiment. These kinds of people actually help us evolve. They are philosophers and peacemakers of a very high order, and they speak not just to reason or emotion, but to the soul."

"President Obama, himself a one-time advocate of single payer coverage, buckled to the insurance companies and its lobbyists and minions in Congress and agreed to health care legislation (the Affordable Care Act) that would continue to treat healing the sick as a profit center instead of a basic human right."

"There's only one thing different about Barack Obama when it comes to being a Democratic presidential candidate. He's half African-American."

"Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world's attention and given its people hope for a better future. His diplomacy is founded in the concept that those who are to lead the world must do so on the basis of values and attitudes that are shared by the majority of the world's population. For 108 years, the Norwegian Nobel Committee has sought to stimulate precisely that international policy and those attitudes for which Obama is now the world's leading spokesman. The Committee endorses Obama's appeal that "Now is the time for all of us to take our share of responsibility for a global response to global challenges.""

"John Kerry with a tan."

"Barack is one of the smartest people you will ever encounter who will deign to enter this messy thing called politics."

"Mr. Obama is proving the truism that the executive branch will use any power it is given and very likely abuse it."

"That is why when I heard Obama’s two speeches I was struck by how much he spoke in accord with the spirit of Vatican II. In those two addresses, as well as in his other speeches, he called for civility, for the end of name-calling, and for a willingness to work together to deal with our common problems, including abortion, rather than a stand-off determination to impose one’s principles without reckoning what the cost to the common good might be."

"Days after jihadi gunmen slaughtered 11 staffers of the Charlie Hebdo magazine and a policeman on January 7, hundreds of thousands of French people marched in solidarity against Islamic radicalism. Forty-four world leaders joined them, but not President Barack Obama. Neither did his attorney general at the time, Eric Holder, or Homeland Security Deputy Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, both of whom were in Paris that day."

"Back in 2007, President Bush succeeded in convening Israeli and Arab leaders, together with the representatives of some 40 states, at the Annapolis peace conference. In May 2015, Obama had difficulty convincing several Arab leaders to attend a Camp David summit on the Iranian issue. The president who pledged to bring Arabs and Israelis together ultimately did so not through peace, but out of their common anxiety over his support for the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and his determination to reach a nuclear accord with Iran. Only Iran, in fact, still holds out the promise of sustaining Obama's initial hopes for a fresh start with Muslims."

"Now we are doing imperialism with a black face."

"Barack Obama has silenced the antiwar movement almost single-handedly by his actions, on the one hand, saying that he opposed war and promoting to pull all troops from Iraq and, on the other hand, throwing the antiwar movement under the bus by sending 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan. Keep in mind that the war budget is larger under Obama than it was under Bush. Obama has the same Defense Department Secretary as under Bush. Where is the change?"

"Barack Obama is hell-bent on engaging the Iranian regime just to prove that he’s not George Bush. That doesn’t help the problem. That’s not what people expected in Iran... The people of Iran are asking for help, and Obama cares about showing Khamenei that he can reason with him. That was Jimmy Carter’s mentality in 1979 and that’s still the mentality in 2012."

"This is a man who can give an entire speech about the wars America is fighting and never use the word "victory" except when he's talking about his own campaign. But when the cloud of rhetoric has passed, when the roar of the crowd fades away, when the stadium lights go out and those Styrofoam Greek columns are hauled back to some studio lot — what exactly is our opponent's plan? What does he actually seek to accomplish, after he's done turning back the waters and healing the planet? The answer is to make government bigger."

"By contrast, Obama’s appeal for a new paradigm that relies on the enthusiasm of young voters and the patriotism of rank-and-file Americans to leap past the stale politics of the Clinton and Bush years makes some sense. Given Obama’s relatively thin résumé, his candidacy may require a leap of faith. But it is at least a leap toward something new and untested, rather than something old and failed."

"Barack spoke out against the war [in Iraq] before it started, and he respects civil liberties, and I respect him for that. [...] But Barack Obama is not going to talk about the goal of getting rid of the income tax and dealing with monetary policy. I mean, he's too much into the welfare state issue, not quite understanding how free market economics is the truly compassionate system. If we care about the poor and want to help the poor, you have to have free markets. You can't have a welfare state in order to try to take care of people."

"Does the president not understand the way this game works?. He wants to get it done and be beloved, and you can’t have both—which does he want?"

"Despite what Obama says, racism is not passed along in DNA through the generations. If that were the case, America wouldn't be the tolerant, multi-racial country it is today. Yes, America, like the vast majority of the rest of the world, at one time participated in slavery. While the sin of slavery is not justified, it is important to acknowledge that the sin of slavery isn't a uniquely American sin, but rather one of mankind throughout the course of history. Further, owning slaves is not a sin unique to white people; in fact, black Africans sold other blacks into slavery, and still do today. Slavery is uniquely human, but societies and countries that respect human dignity, like America, have stopped the horrifying practice. America had the dignity to end slavery through a civil war and has since moved forward to correct wrongs with the civil rights movement, affirmative action, legislation, popular culture and much more. Institutional racism is no longer prevalent in the ways the left claims. Obama, elected twice by American voters, is black, as is former Attorney General Eric Holder and current Attorney General Loretta Lynch. There are a number of blacks serving in the U.S. Congress, including Republican Senator Tim Scott and Congresswoman Mia Love, Utah. The likes of Oprah Winfrey and Beyoncé are business and pop culture icons. Look around the world and you'll find that America is the most tolerant and open society on earth."

"Obama merely perpetuated the myth and lie that our nation endorsed or approved of slavery and Jim Crow. He should have made clear that it wasn't. It was primarily the white supporters of the Democratic Party. The party that became known as the 'Party of White Supremacy'."

"I am strongly encouraged by Senator Obama's speech on America's energy future. Foreign oil is killing our economy and putting our nation at risk. … This issue is clearly moving up in the priority of political debate; Senator Obama's statement is an indication..."

"I wasn’t “harsh” towards Obama. It was Obama who was harsh towards much of humanity, contrary to his often absurd media image. Obama was one of the most violent U.S. Presidents. He launched or sustained seven wars and left office with none resolved: a record. In his last year as President, 2016, according to the Council on Foreign Relations, he dropped 26,171 bombs. It’s an interesting statistic; it’s three bombs every hour, 24 hours a day, on mostly civilians. The bombing technique Obama made his own was assassination by drone. Every Tuesday, reported The New York Times, he selected the names of those who would die in a “programme” of extrajudicial murder. All males of military age in Yemen and the frontiers of Pakistan were considered fair game. He increased America’s special forces operations around the world, notably in Africa. Along with France and Britain, he and his Secretary of State Hillary Clinton destroyed Libya as a modern state on the false and familiar pretext that its leader was about to conduct a massacre of “innocents”. This led directly to the growth of the medievalists of ISIS [or Islamic State] and a stampede of immigration from Africa to Europe. He overthrew the democratically elected President of Ukraine and installed an openly fascist-backed regime—as a deliberate provocation to Russia."

"So accomplished was the advertising (a record $75m was spent on television commercials alone) that many Americans actually believed Obama shared their opposition to Bush’s wars. In fact, he had repeatedly backed Bush’s warmongering and its congressional funding. Many Americans also believed he was the heir to Martin Luther King’s legacy of anti-colonialism. Yet if Obama had a theme at all, apart from the vacuous 'Change you can believe in,' it was the renewal of America as a dominant, avaricious bully. 'We will be the most powerful,' he often declared."

"People don't come to Obama for what he's done in the Senate. They come because of what they hope he could be."

"What's frustrating to me sometimes about Obama is that the world seems to disappoint him. Republicans disappoint him, Bashar al-Assad disappoints him, Putin as well."

"Barack Obama has failed America. When he took office, the economy was in recession. He made it worse. And he made it last longer. Three years later, over 16 million Americans are out of work or have just quit looking. Millions more are underemployed. Three years later, unemployment is still above 8%, a figure he said his stimulus would keep from happening. Three years later, foreclosures are still at record levels. Three years later the prices of homes continue to fall. Three years later, our national debt has grown nearly as large as our entire economy. Families are buried under higher prices for food and higher prices for gasoline. It breaks my heart to see what's happening in this country. These failing hopes make up President Obama's own misery index. It's never been higher."

"Today, I think Barack Obama is little different to George Bush. I've read all of his books. He is a brilliant writer and a brilliant speaker, but he is still dominated by the military system, still dominated by multinationals. He is a capitalist."

"President Obama is a friend of mine. I have worked with him on many issues. But on the issue of trade he has been dead wrong…In 2010, President Obama signed a law making it easier for borrowers to repay their student loans and avoid default through income-based repayment. It also included some limited loan forgiveness for public servants and long-term debtors. These were important steps, but they do not go nearly far enough in addressing the oppressive burden of crushing student loan debt…Under President Obama there is no question that we have made some progress in moving forward in transforming our energy system…I applaud President Obama for his unwavering leadership in Paris, and for standing up to the powerful interests in this country who opposed his efforts. However, while the agreement sets out a global action plan to limit global warming, many climate scientists believe the accord goes nowhere near far enough in terms of reducing global carbon emissions. The good news is there is a framework in place. Our goal now must be to strengthen the accord by setting more aggressive carbon reduction goals."

"He is a community organizer like Jesus was …And now, we’re a community and he can organize us."

"Now we have an unknown stealth candidate who went to a madrassas in Indonesia and, in fact, was a Muslim."

"[Obama is] a Marxist in his heart. He's an Afro-Leninist, and I know he's dangerous."

"Obama is not insane. He's stoned. He's stoned on the orthodoxy of the progressive left. Obama and his supporters are drunk on their ideology. They think they're going to create a progressive utopia by continuing their attack on all Western values. This is precisely how great civilizations of the past declined and eventually fell. They rejected the values that made them great and degenerated into narcissism and selfishness. They kept on partying until they were too weak to defend themselves. Then, the unthinkable happened. They fell."

"I was most forcefully struck by this sentence: “As president, I refuse to set goals that go beyond our responsibility, our means, or our interests.” That is perhaps the most starkly expressed realist sentiment that I can remember hearing from a president since … well, I’m honestly not sure when. And Obama then followed it up by citing Eisenhower, who was really the last president to worry publicly about the balance between our commitments abroad and our ability to pay for them."

"In Cairo, Obama said his job as president of the United States is to "fight against negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear." That's certainly not the job of the president of the United States. It is not even the job of the most ardently tolerant Christian. Is it any wonder that so many people believe Obama to be an emissary of Islam?"

"President Obama is highly concerned with education. He’s a champion on early-childhood development strategies. So I like the work he’s doing, and I support it, and I realise that he’s one of very few political leaders around the world that actually has early-childhood development strategies at the top of his agenda."

"If Barack Obama was a state he'd be California. I mean, think about it: diverse, open, smart, independent, oppose tradition, innovative, inspiring, dreamer, leader."

"He single-handedly protected more natural habitat than any US president in history, using the Antiquities Act 34 times to conserve more than 550 million acres of lands and waters as national monuments"

"This isn't just some phenomenon of the Internet — to liken Barack Obama to the flash-in-the-pan Dean campaign does him a disservice. There is something happening with this guy, and I don't think he should be given short shrift."

"It is February 27, 2013. Barack Obama, having been safely reelected, awakens one morning to news that Muslims in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Indonesia, Egypt, and elsewhere are rioting and storming U.S. embassies, tearing down the American flag and raising the black flag of jihad. They're in a rage over a book that depicts Muhammad as waging war against his enemies, consummating a marriage with a nine-year-old girl when in his fifties, and raining down curses upon Jews, Christians, and others. A grim-faced Obama immediately takes to the airwaves. [...] On the grounds that they're promoting "Islamophobia," feminists who speak out against the forced head coverings and brutalization are swiftly arrested and prosecuted. Other Sharia demands follow. Pork and alcohol products disappear from grocery shelves. New laws are enacted that restrict the movements, educational opportunities, and employment opportunities of women. All the new laws are sold as preventing hatred against Muslims. No one dares speak out."

"Now we've got money, Obama money Yeah, we're printin' it in the basement just as fast as we can We've got money, Obama money We're livin' the Obama budget plan!"

"Obama's legislative record, speeches, and the way he has run his campaign reveal, I think, a very even temperament, a very sound judgment, and an intelligent pragmatism. Prudence is a word that is not inappropriate to him."

"Does this look like a behavior of an innocent person? An innocent person would have come to court and showed all the valid documents with the embossed seals, which are verifiable. Instead he is acting like a 5-year-old brat, saying "I am afraid of Orly", "I want the secretary of state of GA to act like my mommy and protect me from Orly." Some leader of a free world..."

"Senator Obama has adopted the position of every liberal interest group in this country."

"Obama, too, needs to step up his efforts; it's not just Congress and the voters who have been misguided. Those close to the president say he understands the seriousness of global warming. But despite the issue's moral gravity, he's been paralyzed by political caution. He leads from the rear on climate change, not from the front."