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  • 2018-07-02 (xsd:date)
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  • Did Barack Obama Say 'If We Don’t Do Something About This President, I Will?' (en)
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  • A quote ostensibly uttered by former president Barack Obama regarding how he was going to do something about President Trump (if no one else stepped forward to do so) began bouncing around Facebook pages and troll forums at the end of June 2018: This rumor garnered an additional (unearned) patina of credibility when it was retweeted by the verified Twitter account of conservative radio host Bill Mitchell: Barack Obama did speak at a Democratic National Committee Fundraiser on 28 June 2018 in Beverly Hills, California, but his remarks did not include anything matching the statement offered here. Multiple news outlets reported on the former president's remarks at this fundraiser, including Politico, the Daily Caller, CNN, and Fox News, yet we found no reference to what would have been a very newsworthy statement (if Obama had truly made it) in any news report about Obama's speech. And although this quote meme has been posted to numerous online forums and sites, we haven't turned up a single instance in which it was accompanied by any evidence documenting that Barack Obama uttered these words. Time magazine's report on Obama's speech noted that the former president didn't mention President Donald Trump once by name, and that even though Obama made subtle references to his disapproval of the current administration, his main focus in his speech was to mobilize Democrats: Another portion of the speech quoted by the Los Angeles Times documented how Obama focused on calling the Democratic community to action rather than avowing to do something on his own: Likewise, CNN's account of the speech recorded the former president as exhorting his audience to take action themselves: The if we don't do something ... I will quote was apparently either made up out of whole cloth or was someone's very bad paraphrase of Barack Obama's comments at the June 2018 DNC fundraiser. (en)
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