Today in Conservative Media: The End of Obama

A daily roundup of the biggest stories in right-wing media.

On the eve of President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration, conservative media took stock of President Obama’s eight years in office.

In a segment called “Hannity’s Advice to Obama: Show a Little Class,” Fox News’ Sean Hannity said, “President Obama is leaving office the same way he came in, as a rigid, divisive and radical ideologue who will stop at nothing to undermine his political opponents.” Hannity vowed that “after 100 days of Donald Trump being president, it’s going to be like [Obama] was never there, except for the debt he left us and the liberal activist judges he appointed.”

The Daily Caller also focused on how quickly Trump will wipe out Obama’s policy legacy. Citing a Fox News analyst, the Daily Caller wrote: “President-elect Donald Trump will sign as many as 200 executive orders targeting a wide range of Obama administration policies.” It named “Obama-era executive orders on immigration” and the Affordable Care Act as targets.

Breitbart called some House Democrats’ decision to boycott the inauguration a sign of Obama’s divisive legacy. The piece also weighed in on the state of the Democratic Party, calling it “not just a defeated political party, but also a defeated religion.”

Obama convinced Democrats they would govern for 40 years—and that if they were displaced, it would be by a new party, not today’s GOP. As his policies collapsed, and he lost Congress, he hovered above it all—“sort of God,” a Newsweek editor said. But time, and term limits, happened to Obama. He is mortal. He is the God that failed. And they cannot handle it.

Another Breitbart post focused on Obama’s legacy though the lens of the war in Afghanistan. “Security conditions continue to deteriorate primarily at the hands of the Taliban, Afghans have suffered record casualties, and U.S. military fatalities have dramatically increased under his watch.”

In a post called “Tonight, the Sun Sets on the Obama Administration for the Last Time,” National Review wrote, “How did the Obama presidency measure up to your expectations? If your expectations are low enough, it wasn’t that bad.” The post goes on to say that eight years of Obama’s presidency had challenged conservatism but concluded that Trump’s election “smashes the idea that the country had shifted irrevocably to the left.”

On conservative Facebook pages, anti-Obama sentiments, in meme form, circulated widely.