Politics

Obama: ‘Problem is…I’m not the emperor of the United States’

obama-emperor1On Thursday, Barack Obama engaged in a gaffe The Blaze said “sounded more like something you might expect from Vice President Joe Biden.”

While participating in a Google Hangout, Obama was asked about his administration deporting “record numbers” of illegal immigrants during his first term.

“This is something I’ve struggled with throughout my presidency,” he said.

“The problem is that I’m the president of the United States, I’m not the emperor of the United States. My job is to execute laws that are passed.”

Unless, of course, he doesn’t support them, like the Defense of Marriage Act, which he unilaterally decided was unconstitutional and not to be enforced by the Justice Department.  Last July, he bypassed Congress on welfare reform and effectively rewrote the law with a policy directive.

Jason Howerton of The Blaze cut the president some slack.

“Now, while many of the president’s conservative critics argue that he has behaved like an ’emperor’ by exerting his will via executive orders, it is unlikely that Obama was actually lamenting the fact that he is not the emperor of the United States,” he wrote.

But Obama has decried the fact that he cannot rule unilaterally on certain issues more than once, and he has repeatedly shown his willingness to bypass Congress with executive orders and regulations.

Watch the video and decide for yourself — was this just a Biden-like gaffe, or does he really wish he could rule the country like a dictator?

Related:

 

 

Joe Newby

A 10-year veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps, Joe ran for a city council position in Riverside, Calif., in 1991 and managed successful campaigns for the Idaho state legislature. Co-author of "Banned: How Facebook enables militant Islamic jihad," Joe wrote for Examiner.com from 2010 until it closed in 2016 and his work has been published at Newsbusters, Spokane Faith and Values and other sites. He now runs the Conservative Firing Line.

Related Articles

Our Privacy Policy has been updated to support the latest regulations.Click to learn more.×