Obama Supports Holder Because “He’s a Race Man”

gty_eric_holder_obama_thg_120620_wg

Nice to have that in the open. The Politico story on why Holder survived comes down to Obama’s fear of an honest Attorney General (Holder has never been accused of being anything other than a political hack with no respect for the law) and race.

It may well be the main reason the first black president of the United States has stood so firmly behind the first black attorney general of the United States: Holder has been willing to say the things Obama couldn’t or wouldn’t say about race.

“He’s a race man,” says Charles Ogletree, a longtime friend of Holder’s who taught and mentored Obama and his wife, Michelle, as Harvard Law School students in the 1980s. “He’s gone farther and deeper into some issues of race than the White House would like, but I know he has the president’s well-wishes. It’s clear [Obama and Holder] believe in the same things.”

Holder himself recently told another African-American friend that he feels part of his job is “to talk about things the president can’t talk about as easily.”

Asked to describe Holder’s role, one of his former top aides described him as “Obama’s heat shield.”

Of course that’s not the Attorney General’s job. But Holder puts Team Obama ahead of Team America. He’s a race man.

From the start, the White House staff has been at odds with Holder—a conflict that, my sources told me, has been one of the longest-running hidden dramas of this White House. “He says he’s on Team Obama, but he’s really on Team Holder,” one top Obama aide told me.

The bad blood goes all the way back to a month into Obama’s first term—as the West Wing staff was working 18-hour days to keep the economy from collapsing—when Holder jolted Obama’s team seemingly out of nowhere. Tellingly, the subject was race. Holder informed the White House he planned to deliver a Black History Month speech but never got around to telling Obama’s aides what he would actually say, a habit that would infuriate the White House time and again over the years—and underscore Holder’s special standing in Obama’s world.

“Though this nation has proudly thought of itself as an ethnic melting pot, in things racial we have always been and continue to be, in too many ways, essentially a nation of cowards,” Holder declared to a gathering of Justice Department employees—a bombshell assertion that caused the predictable rage among Obama’s attackers on the right, who accused him of playing the race card.

Obama’s top political aides—white liberals to a man, and they were all men—didn’t necessarily disagree with Holder’s sentiment; they just thought it was a dumb way of saying it and dangerously ill-timed to boot. Obama was ticked off, too, and did nothing to stop his top advisers David Axelrod, Rahm Emanuel, Robert Gibbs and Jim Messina from severely restricting Holder’s public utterances and imposing a ban on Sunday show appearances that stands to this day.

But the president’s anger only went so far, and Holder takes no small satisfaction in outlasting those early rivals. In interviews, many of the officials I spoke with offered a blunt explanation for his bond with Obama: For all the president’s success at breaking barriers, Obama is often the only black person in the room when a major decision is being made…

Here’s your post-racial America on a plate. More racist than ever before.

The matchmaker who had brought the two couples together was the ever-present Jarrett…

Holder’s own bond with Jarrett was cemented in 2007 when the two hosted weekly conference calls with other black leaders on behalf of the Obama campaign…

Soon, other aides would be calling the threesome of Obama, Jarrett and Holder the “iron triangle.”

Holder, Jarrett and Susan Rice, then Obama’s U.N. ambassador, were among the few administration officials to receive regular invitations to the president’s private residence in the White House.

Increasingly, Jarrett was providing Holder with support and a back channel for him to appeal decisions made by Obama’s political team. (Holder’s “appeals court” is how some West Wingers saw her.)

Holder views the vote as emblematic of Republicans’ disrespect for Obama and himself, and he thinks that race is one, but not the only, factor in their attacks.

Two people in Holder’s orbit told me he has described appearing before congressional committees as an experience akin to staring at a hostile “wall of Southern men.”

Holder often commiserates about his grillings, via text messages and email, with a group of supportive African-American journalists and public figures, including Rev. Al Sharpton; Juan Williams, the NPR commentator turned Fox contributor; former CNN analyst Roland Martin; Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post; NPR’s Michele Norris; and her husband, Broderick Johnson, a White House aide—a cadre that often encourages Holder to push back harder than his more cautious in-house advisers.

  • Judahlevi

    It has always been clear that Obama and Holder see and define people by the color of their skin. Like most leftists, they are racists.

    The author of the article also writes it as a racist would. To say that when a decision is being made that Obama may be the only “black” person in the room, my first thought would be “So what?” What difference does that make?

    Skin color does not make decisions – your mind does.

    • Christopher Riddle

      Liberals like Obongo and Holder are MORE than just “RACISTS”:They Are”HATERS”!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

  • truebearing

    Obama’s loyalties: #1) Himself; #2) Blacks; #3) Islam; #4) Marxism: #5) Homosexuality.

    Truth, white people, America, and Israel didn’t make the list as no traces of loyalty were detectable.

    Obama’s profile: a pathologically narcissistic, racist, Muslim/Marxist with homosexual proclivities that hates white people, despises Israel, and wants to destroy America.

    • DogmaelJones1

      Both Obama and Holder want to destroy America as they see it: a bastion of “white” culture. There’s your racism. Or, rather, their racism. They want to see the country swamped with Mexican and Muslim immigrants, not only to create grateful Democratic voting blocs, but also because they want to “transform” the country into one that isn’t beholden to reason and individualism and the rule of law, none of which are attributable to Mexico or Islam (or to virtually any South American country, albeit Argentina flirted with those ideas for a while before succumbing to the fascism of the Perons and the juntas and socialism). Obama and Holder and Jarrett and the rest of that crew are playing their own version of the “knockout” game.

      • The March Hare

        Obama supported Derrick Bell who was the father of Critical Race Theory which holds that all whites are racist.

    • Bryan Schmick

      Sorry, #1 Himself, #2 Marxism, #3 Islam, #4 Blacks.
      #1) His signature legislation was ACA. He defends it to the point of shutting down the government even though he doesn’t believe in the individual mandate according to his debates with Hillary Clinton in 2008. He also hates private insurance companies based on his constant ‘fat cat insurance CEOs’ comments. He just can’t bear to have his signature law cancelled even though he preferred fully socialized Marxism.
      #2) ACA is a partial move to Socialism and he supports it even though it hurts plenty of Black people due to hurting the economy. Fully socialized insurance would be bad for all of America, especially black people who wouldn’t be able to pay for actual health care.
      #3) Islamic nations still support slavery of Black people, but they get a bye.
      #4) Where it doesn’t conflict with the first three, he supports Black people more than American people
      (#5) The only reason he supports Homosexuality is because of campaign contributions. Did you notice his latest LGBT Executive order was issued the day before his campaign fund trip to an LGBT event in New York?

      #2 and #3 can be swapped. Radical Islam is a governance system as much as a religion where central management is the key.

      • truebearing

        As long as “himself” is number one, the order will work a number of ways.

    • IronMaidenaregods

      Under sharia law, homosexuals are executed to death.

      It is worth pointing this out.

  • Elizabeth Cape Cod

    Holder is a ‘social justice activist’. That can never be a good thing.
    Justice SHOULD be color blind!

    • truebearing

      Well, he’s blind to crimes committed by people of color. In his mind that is color blind.

      • Elizabeth Cape Cod

        That’s the truth. Justice is supposed to be blind, but he’s blind to justice.

  • Bryan Schmick

    Minor disagreement with the article. President Obama protects AG Holder first and foremost because the AG is the president’s man. Mr. Greenfield says it best when he says the AG puts team Obama ahead of team America. Consider AG Holder’s actions re the Louisiana voucher system. The LA voucher system obviously helps thousands of black people, but it hurts Democrat campaign donations. President Obama is primarily focused on campaign contributions as eight years of Obama campaigning instead of presiding has shown us. Where it doesn’t hurt campaign contributions, both are racists. The thing is, both consider money more important than race.

  • objectivefactsmatter

    “Race man” is the PC term for an anti-racist racist?

    • truebearing

      No, I think he meant Holder is a huge fan of NASCAR.

      • objectivefactsmatter

        Road racing = good. Oval track…I get bored. Race-baiting = bad.

  • objectivefactsmatter

    “Of course that’s not the _________ job.”

    Do any of them do their appointed jobs? Any? State Department and Global Warming? NASA and Muslim self-esteem? Need I go on? IRS is now a political tool and so is every other institution under the control of the White House.

  • liz

    Obama and Holder – leading the revival and fulfilling the dream of Malcom X, Huey Newton and Eldridge Cleaver.

  • USARetired

    Holders main function at this point is to protect the illegal immigrant, Obozo, from being impeached! Personally, this nation needs to stuff them both in the same hole!

  • Christopher Riddle

    “The Enforcer”also has his head so far up Obongo’s A$$,he doesn’t know what time of day it is!!

  • Brucew56

    My question – how does a minority of 13 % of the population get away with acting like The Liar in Chief and his Lap Dogs do while they run rough shod over America? There must be A LOT of know nothing people not paying attention and many in the political class that have sold the rest of us down the river and don’t care about anything but staying in power!

  • carpe diem 36

    if anyone needs to see why this country will not, and for sure should not, vote for a Black president, these two are the very good reason for that. They cannot help seeing everything and everyone through their black view point, and this is a very bad thing for a country. No white person ever saw america in people’s skin colors, only the blacks have this capacity, no matter in what position they hold.

  • WORSEKarma

    I’m not sure what’s worse: The information presented by Politico, or their fawning, ass-sucking adoration of same…