 To nobody's surprise, former President Barack Obama has officially endorsed Joe Biden, and along with his endorsement comes a really fascinating article from The New York Times, which basically confirms all of our suspicions about what Obama was covertly doing. He was basically acting to sabotage and undermine the progressive movement at every single step of the way during this primary process. He did, in fact, pressure Bernie Sanders to drop out, and he pulled a lot of strings to make sure that he could drag Joe Biden across the finish line. So we're definitely talking about that article, but before we do that, I do want to play a clip from Obama's endorsement. I found it incredibly patronizing, and I'll admit that part of that is because I'm incredibly bitter right now, not going to lie, but it's patronizing because he tries to pat progressives on the heads by saying, look, we do need to go further, even further than my 2008 campaign, and we need progressive policy proposals. And as he says all of this, you can't ignore the fact that he did everything to stop real progress from happening. And on top of that, he makes a really passionate plea for Joe Biden, who also has been incredibly accused of rape. So any goodwill that Obama cultivated over the years, it should be all gone after you watch this, but it's difficult because people will see this, and they're reminded that he was once a president who spoke in complete sentences. That's what Joy Reid tweeted out. So it's so easy to get back into the swing of just trying to gravitate towards someone who's a leader, but understand that what Obama is saying here, all of it is fake. It's inauthentic. It's all disingenuous. This is all just political theater. Everyone in D.C. is basically full of shit, so I'll stop talking, let you watch the endorsement. We'll come back. We'll talk about that article. Choosing Joe to be my vice president was one of the best decisions I ever made, and it became a close friend, and I believe Joe has all the qualities we need in a president right now. Bernie's an American original, a man who has devoted his life to giving voice to working people's hopes, dreams, and frustrations. He and I haven't always agreed on everything, but we've always shared a conviction that we have to make America a fairer, more just, more equitable society. We both know that nothing is more powerful than millions of voices calling for change. And the ideas he's championed, the energy and enthusiasm he inspired, especially in young people, will be critical in moving America in a direction of progress and hope. Because for the second time in 12 years, we'll have the incredible task of rebuilding our economy. And to meet the moment, the Democratic Party will have to be bold. You know, I could not be prouder of the incredible progress that we made together during my presidency. But if I were running today, I wouldn't run the same race, or have the same platform as I did in 2008. The world is different. There's too much unfinished business for us to just look backwards. We have to look to the future. Bernie understands that. And Joe understands that. It's one of the reasons that Joe already has what is the most progressive platform of any major party nominee in history. We have to protect the gains we made with the Affordable Care Act. But it's also time to go further. We should make plans affordable for everyone. Provide everyone with a public option. And Medicare. And finish the job so that health care isn't just a right, but a reality for everybody. We have to return the U.S. to the Paris Agreement, and lead the world in reducing the pollution that causes climate change. But science tells us, we have to go much further, that it's time for us to accelerate progress on bold new green initiatives that make our economy a clean energy innovator. Give us money and secure our children's future. Wow. You know, he's just, he's so charismatic that I almost forgot that he's literally a war criminal who had a kill list, an extra-judicial kill list. And he frequently, like George W. Bush, like Donald Trump, violated international laws. But he's so charismatic, though, yeah. I think that watching this endorsement, even though I knew it was coming, it's still really grotesque. Because it feels like we're all sheep being herded to slaughter. There's absolutely no commitment from the Democratic Party or leaders to actually enact progressive policies. And as Obama talks about the real need to get progressive policies codified into law, he did everything he could to stop that from happening behind the scenes. So we're going to look at this New York Times article that lays out in great detail how he did this and how party leaders reacted to the success of the progressive movement at certain times during the race. So as Glenn Thrush of the New York Times reports, over the past year, Joseph R. Biden Jr. and former President Barack Obama practiced a political distancing of sorts with Mr. Obama maintaining a posture of public neutrality in the Democratic primaries, offering counsel to any candidate who called, most did, and Mr. Biden's saying he wanted to win on his own. But with calibrated stealth, Mr. Obama has been considerably more engaged in the campaign's denouement than has been previously revealed even before he endorsed Mr. Biden on Tuesday. For months, Mr. Obama had kept in close contact with senior party officials in hopes of preventing a repeat of the protracted and nasty 2016 primary race. Then in the weeks after it became clear that Mr. Biden was the party's near certain nominee, Mr. Obama telling a friend he needed to accelerate the end game had at least four long conversations with his former vice president's remaining rival, Senator Bernie Sanders. Mr. Obama's efforts to ease the senator out of the race played a significant role in Mr. Sanders' decision to end his bid and endorse Mr. Biden according to people close to the Vermont Independent. Party officials were more direct prodding Mr. Obama to be more active behind the scenes, especially after Mr. Biden had begun his comeback by winning the South Carolina primary. But the former president, often communicating through Eric Schultz, a political aide who has also served as a bridge to the Biden campaign, insisted that his best use would be as a passive peacemaker. He kept his powder dry and that gave him credibility, which made all the difference, said Tom Perez, the Democratic National Committee chairman, who served as Labor Secretary under Mr. Obama. So again, this confirms what I was speculating about in a video I put out last week. Did Barack Obama, given the evidence that we had at the time, influence Bernie Sanders' pressure him to get out of the race? And this article lays it all out. What Obama told Bernie, whatever that was in these private conversations played a significant role in Bernie Sanders making his decision. And to me, I view this as incredible naivete on Bernie Sanders' behalf because Bernie needs to acknowledge that given the choice between Joe Biden and himself, who does he think Obama is going to side with? Do you honestly think that Obama had your best interest? If you're going to drop out, you have to do it in a way that positions you and the left to have some sort of leverage, right? We're not going to have power. The left will remain powerless. But you've got to put us in a better off position than where we were before. But he dropped out and gave up all of his leverage. And he did this because Obama asked him to or pressured him to, whatever the case may be. And that's really frustrating. Like, I'm not going to pretend like the math was in Bernie Sanders' favor because it wasn't. But the problem is that if you know you're going to drop out, if you read the writing that's on the wall and it doesn't look good for your campaign, weaponize what you can to be better off. Like, I don't know how Joe Biden endorsed one of your signature policy positions, even if we don't believe him. It makes it seem at least like you tried. But I mean, we got nothing. Now there's a little bit more details about how the establishment really was trying to call on Obama to step in after Bernie Sanders won that landslide in Nevada, which was basically the peak time when everyone who was still running were saying that if Bernie Sanders were the nominee, they would influence superdelegates to steal it from Bernie in order to give it to him. Even Joe Biden said that if nobody won a majority and Bernie only had a plurality, he would contest the convention or still fight for the nomination. I'm paraphrasing. So, you know, all this talk of unity now and to fall in line just immediately like that, this is not a respect that would have been paid to Bernie Sanders. But this is what happened. Obama had intended to engage publicly only after the convention now scheduled for August at the earliest, in line with his fall barnstorming campaign on behalf of Ms. Clinton in 2016 and congressional candidates in 2018. He resisted calls by some Democratic officials earlier this year to intervene on Mr. Biden's behalf in the wake of Mr. Sanders' victory in the Nevada caucuses arguing that he did not want to thumb the scale for his friend. Nonetheless, he was becoming more agitated by the state of the race as Mr. Sanders surged and Mr. Biden slumped. By late February, he was telling people in his orbit that he thought Mr. Biden's campaign had an alarming lack of infrastructure and shared his doubts about Mr. Biden's belief that he could win the nomination after losing Iowa and New Hampshire. Mr. Obama did not directly encourage Mr. Sanders' rivals to endorse Mr. Biden ahead of the decisive Super Tuesday primaries. Yeah, right. But he did tell Pete Buttigieg, a moderate, that he would never have more leverage than on the day he was quitting the race. So in other words, he did. And the former South Bend mayor soon joined the avalanche of former candidates backing Mr. Biden. Mr. Sanders, who in 2016 accused the Democratic establishment of conspiring to support Ms. Clinton, took note of all these moves. But he has made no such charges against Mr. Obama. In fact, one of his campaign advisors speaking on the condition of anonymity in the wake of last month's string of Sanders' defeats, said the senator was grateful for Mr. Obama's neutrality throughout the campaign. That is pathetic, Bernie. In late March, Mr. Obama reached out to Mr. Sanders. The two men would talk at least three more times with the former president, reassuring Mr. Sanders that he had already accomplished much of what he had set out to do. Moving the party and Mr. Biden substantially to the left, according to two people with knowledge of their interactions. What a joke. Mr. Sanders, for his part, is intent on protecting his open line of communication with the former president. So this is why I think a lot of Bernie Sanders supporters feel really frustrated right now. When we say that Bernie Sanders needed to fight harder, he didn't listen. And, you know, now someone from his campaign is saying, actually, we really respect that Obama was neutral throughout the course of the campaign. But I mean, did you not read the reports that we all saw? He was not neutral. He was the Debbie Wasserman Schultz of 2020. The only difference is that instead of using institutional mechanisms to sabotage Bernie's campaign, Obama used his own power and influence to sabotage Bernie Sanders' campaign. And I've got news for you. In the event, let's say South Carolina went differently and Amy Klobuchar had emerged victorious. That probably would have been who Obama made everyone else coalesce around. It wasn't necessarily about Joe Biden, because we saw the reports about Obama kind of nudging Joe Biden to not run, because he doesn't have to do this. He doesn't want him to embarrass himself. I did a video on this. It was really interesting. So it wasn't necessarily, you know, a pro-Biden move by Obama. This was just an anti-Bernie move. And I think that's really telling. This isn't just Obama looking out for his friend. This is him fighting to stop progress. And that's what I want people to understand. This isn't Obama-Biden friendship, you know, conflicts of interest. This is about Obama doing everything that he possibly can to deny the left power. The same left-mind you that helped him get elected twice. It's a slap in the face. And Bernie Sanders, now that he has nothing to lose, he won't call it out. And look, Bernie Sanders, he's principled. He's committed. So maybe he's going to wait until after this election cycle to speak up. But he's got to communicate to us in some way that he understands the disservice that was done to the left, not just by the establishment and Obama, but also the media. But Bernie Sanders is just a nice person who doesn't play politics. And, you know, that's a good thing. I like a politician that doesn't, you know, engage in politics because it's disingenuous, but you've got to be a little bit more savvy than that. And Bernie just, he wasn't. So what I want people to take away from this ultimately is that if you ever want a chance at getting power, you have to do everything to discredit and delegitimize Barack Obama. Because so long as he is this holy figure within the Democratic Party, he can use that influence that he has to fuck over the left for decades to come. And that's a failure on our part. We didn't educate enough people about the inconsistencies and failings and war crimes of Barack Obama. We didn't tell people that Obama's neoliberalism and failures led to the rise of a right-wing demagogue being successful like Donald Trump. Like, does anyone believe that if Obama actually followed through on his message of change, that Donald Trump would have been elected? Of course not. So Obama is someone who I think the left really needs to focus on educating people about. He is not anyone's friend. He is only a friend to centrists and the power establishment. He acts as a gatekeeper and the biggest obstacle to progress. And if you truly want the left to have power, you've got to work really, really hard to discredit Barack Obama and let people know that this is not a good person. He might talk really nicely. He may have charisma. But this is a war criminal with the Nobel Peace Prize. This is someone who proposed a public option. And we didn't even get a public option. He didn't even offer that up when he had a supermajority. And now he's telling you to support his former VP who is supporting a public option. We're supposed to believe them. Like, do you understand? Hillary Clinton, she is absolutely inseparable, but she's a distraction. Hillary Clinton doesn't have the legitimacy that Barack Obama has. She doesn't have the sway that Barack Obama has. So I think that one of the numerous failings of the left is that we haven't done an adequate job at educating people at how much of a failure Barack Obama was. But going forward, I'm going to make sure that people know about Obama's history. People in my social circles and whatnot, they all still really look to Obama as someone who is a good person. When this is a terrible human being who must be discredited because he's not someone who's deserving of all of this power and recognition and worship. People idolize him who are Democratic Party voters. And I can understand why they do that, given what we see in the White House now, a complete buffoon whose brains are melting out of his ears. But at the same time, all of that nice talk and charisma and the beautiful platitudes that Obama uses to swoon us with. That all is nothing more than a distraction for a very, very insidious agenda that is going to prop up the status quo for decades to come unless we educate people about the failure of Obama and the threat that he still poses. Because he may be out of power, but he still has power. So this isn't surprising, but I am glad that we have these details at least because having this information, it kind of gives us a little bit of a roadmap in terms of what we should do going forward when we're talking about putting pressure on the establishment and Democratic Party apparatus, but it's still disappointing.