In the wake of Pres. Barack Obama's final press conference on Wednesday, some members of the press are wondering why the outgoing president is not acting more like his predecessor Pres. George W. Bush. Bush virtually went into hiding when he stepped down, shunning public appearances and stepping off the stage of world affairs.
Bush -- with two vast wars raging and the economy in tatters -- said that Obama "deserved his silence" and should be free to carry on without interference.
At the Wednesday presser, on the other hand, Obama said that he intends to speak out as a private citizen if at any point he feels that our "core values" as a nation are threatened.
According to Mediaite.com, Anderson Cooper asked his Wednesday night panel why Donald Trump would not deserve that same courtesy that Obama received from Bush.
“George W. Bush could have said when President Obama became president, well, when the core values of the Second Amendment are threatened I’m going to speak up,” said Cooper. “Yet, he didn’t. He said he deserved silence. Why doesn’t Donald Trump deserve President Obama’s silence?”
“Very simple," said former Obama adviser Van Jones. "Because Obama came in to fix things that were broke. Trump is coming in to break things that Obama fixed.”
When Pres. Obama took office, the economy was in free-fall following the 2008 financial crash. The nation was hemorrhaging some 600,000 to 800,000 jobs every month and economic growth had stalled.
Now, eight years later, as Obama leaves office, growth has been steady for a record number of months. The unemployment rate keeps edging downward and millions of people have health insurance who were uninsured before.
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