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On Friday, in Strasbourg, President Obama said:

I know that there have been honest disagreements over policy, but we also know that there’s something more that has crept into our relationship.

In America, there’s a failure to appreciate Europe’s leading role in the world. Instead of celebrating your dynamic union and seeking to partner with you to meet common challenges, there have been times where America’s shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive.

But in Europe, there is an anti-Americanism that is at once casual but can also be insidious. Instead of recognizing the good that America so often does in the world, there have been times where Europeans choose to blame America for much of what’s bad.

Ali Frick, who, like Obama, has a foreign sounding name and obviously hates America, notes with a sneer that Sean Hannity chose to highlight only the second paragraph of this before declaring that “the liberal tradition of ‘blame America first,’ well, that’s still alive.”  Nice try, Ali.  But Hannity is right: Obama may have blamed Europe second, but he blamed America first, didn’t he?  What’s the problem?

Also worth noting: Mike Huckabee fulsomely agreed with Hannity, and everyone knows that he’s the friendly, cuddly version of right-wing nutcasery.  Since Huckabee didn’t object, that must mean Hannity was being fair and balanced, as usual.

(But seriously: Sean Hannity is still obsessing over Bill Ayers and Jeremiah Wright?  Jeebus. Can’t he come up with some slightly fresher canard to hurl into the insane-o-sphere five nights a week?  Like maybe Obama is a golem or something?  He’s not going to keep this up for eight years, is he?)

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DONALD TRUMP & DEMOCRACY

Mother Jones was founded to do journalism differently. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after stories others don’t. We’re a nonprofit newsroom, because the kind of truth-telling investigations we do doesn’t happen under corporate ownership.

And we need your support like never before, to fight back against the existential threats American democracy faces. Fundraising for nonprofit media is always a challenge, and we need all hands on deck right now. We have no cushion; we leave it all on the field.

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