Didn't it strike you as 'not bloody likely'? Should've. But the credulous are vulnerable to falling for the most absurd mischaracterizations of statements.
Barack Obama didn’t say ‘the American Dream is to be Donald Trump’
By ALI SWENSON
Published 1:10 PM CDT, March 23, 2022
CLAIM: Years before his presidency, Barack Obama said, “The American Dream is to be Donald Trump.”
AP’S ASSESSMENT: Missing context. Obama didn’t say or write this exact quote. The claim mischaracterizes a line in a paper Obama co-wrote while studying at Harvard University’s law school.
THE FACTS: A widely viewed Instagram post this week revived a years-old misleading claim that Obama once referred to Trump as the direct embodiment of the American Dream.
The post features a portrait of Obama from his Harvard yearbook in 1991, the year he graduated with his law degree. Below the portrait, in italicized letters and dated 1991, it attributes to him the quote, “The American Dream is to be Donald Trump.”
But Obama never literally said this, nor did he write it as a yearbook quote, as the post implies. Instead, the quote is a misleading mash-up of a line in a paper titled “Race and Rights Rhetoric,” which Obama co-wrote with his law school classmate Robert Fisher in April 1991.
“Rising Star: The Making of Barack Obama,” a 2017 biography of Obama by David Garrow, discussed the paper and included the relevant excerpt.
“(Americans have) a continuing normative commitment to the ideals of individual freedom and mobility, values that extend far beyond the issue of race in the American mind,” the excerpt reads. “The depth of this commitment may be summarily dismissed as the unfounded optimism of the average American — I may not be Donald Trump now, but just you wait; if I don’t make it, my children will.”
Obama and Fisher were not calling Trump their idea of the American Dream, but rather making the point that average Americans point to his level of economic status with “unfounded optimism” even as it is unattainable to many.
Obama and Fisher used the line to argue that the best way to stimulate Black advancement in society was to shift focus away from “rights rhetoric” and toward the “language of opportunity,” Garrow wrote.
Several news articles published after Garrow’s book came out covered those nuances, but used simplified headlines that suggested Obama had written that Trump was his idea of the American Dream.
In an email to The Associated Press, Garrow confirmed the quotation was fake, saying Obama and Fisher were “remarking upon the (perhaps excessive) ‘optimism of the average American.’”
Barack Obama didn’t say ‘the American Dream is to be Donald Trump’
By ALI SWENSON
Published 1:10 PM CDT, March 23, 2022
CLAIM: Years before his presidency, Barack Obama said, “The American Dream is to be Donald Trump.”
AP’S ASSESSMENT: Missing context. Obama didn’t say or write this exact quote. The claim mischaracterizes a line in a paper Obama co-wrote while studying at Harvard University’s law school.
THE FACTS: A widely viewed Instagram post this week revived a years-old misleading claim that Obama once referred to Trump as the direct embodiment of the American Dream.
The post features a portrait of Obama from his Harvard yearbook in 1991, the year he graduated with his law degree. Below the portrait, in italicized letters and dated 1991, it attributes to him the quote, “The American Dream is to be Donald Trump.”
But Obama never literally said this, nor did he write it as a yearbook quote, as the post implies. Instead, the quote is a misleading mash-up of a line in a paper titled “Race and Rights Rhetoric,” which Obama co-wrote with his law school classmate Robert Fisher in April 1991.
“Rising Star: The Making of Barack Obama,” a 2017 biography of Obama by David Garrow, discussed the paper and included the relevant excerpt.
“(Americans have) a continuing normative commitment to the ideals of individual freedom and mobility, values that extend far beyond the issue of race in the American mind,” the excerpt reads. “The depth of this commitment may be summarily dismissed as the unfounded optimism of the average American — I may not be Donald Trump now, but just you wait; if I don’t make it, my children will.”
Obama and Fisher were not calling Trump their idea of the American Dream, but rather making the point that average Americans point to his level of economic status with “unfounded optimism” even as it is unattainable to many.
Obama and Fisher used the line to argue that the best way to stimulate Black advancement in society was to shift focus away from “rights rhetoric” and toward the “language of opportunity,” Garrow wrote.
Several news articles published after Garrow’s book came out covered those nuances, but used simplified headlines that suggested Obama had written that Trump was his idea of the American Dream.
In an email to The Associated Press, Garrow confirmed the quotation was fake, saying Obama and Fisher were “remarking upon the (perhaps excessive) ‘optimism of the average American.’”
