Conservative talking head Charlie Kirk gave his religious right followers a social studies lesson remixed with his opinion on why Democrats won the presidency in 2008 and 2012, and Republicans won in 2016.
In his analysis, the Dems won two terms in the Oval Office on a platform of hope and change with a charismatic outsider candidate, Barack Obama. He said on a recent episode of “The Charlie Kirk Show” that when the GOP captured the 45th presidency, it was because their voters wanted a “white Obama.”
Kirk posits that the person for them was Donald Trump.
During a broadcast from a pastors summit in San Diego on Wednesday, Sept. 13, the Turning Point USA founder broke down why he believes the Republicans copied the Obama movement, which he claimed was “larger than life.”
Kirk said Obama had a team that took advantage of social media in a way that had never been applied to a campaign. He also added that the former Illinois community activist was supported by David Plouffe and David Axelrod, a dynamic duo he called a “Chicago mafia,” who came up with a strategy to run a grassroots campaign that worked.
“Obama started to draw crowds,” he recalled on the episode. “Obama was charismatic. Obama was interesting. He could be the first Black president … the media started to fawn over him.”
Obama’s team ran a campaign “on hope and change” that “was larger than life,” and Republican voters wanted their turn, Kirk said.
“We want a white Obama,” he said, they said to themselves, but the only candidates cued up in were Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio, who could not match up to Obama’s packaging, according to Kirk.
“And who was the only person that could potentially play the charismatic game as talented as Barack Obama? Donald Trump,” Kirk added. “So, Donald Trump comes on the scene, and he blows everything up. Live by the sword, die by the sword.”
Trump might not have seen himself as a “white Obama.” The real estate empire heir was always diametrically on the opposite end of the political spectrum than his predecessor. He also made a habit of spreading “fake news” about the first African-American president, starting with the claim that Obama was not born in the United States.
The former reality television show figure, who once said that Frederick Douglass did “an amazing job” but never actually said what that job was, also called the Harvard graduate “the most ignorant president in our history,” according to Politico.
He also said that the 44th president of the United States was “the founder of ISIS” and that he knows “far more about foreign policy” than Obama.
Kirk’s analysis of Trump as a white Obama has not elicited a public reaction from either former president as of this writing.
