Former Obama aide claims former president was 'not a progressive' using a '2025 lens'

Former Obama aide claims former president was 'not a progressive' using a '2025 lens'

Actor and former White House aide Kal Penn claimed that “by a 2025 lens,” former President Barack Obama was “not a progressive.”Penn, who worked for the Obama administration from 2009 to 2011, defended his former boss on the “Hasan Minhaj Doesn’t Know” podcast Wednesday where he celebrated Obama not being considered a progressive as a sign of “progress” working.”You can’t look back at 2009 with a 2025 lens and say this wasn’t progressive enough,” Penn said. “And I will tell you why, it is that, of course, by a 2025 lens, Obama was not a progressive. That’s how you know progress worked.”OBAMA OFFICIAL SAYS DEMOCRATIC PARTY ‘AFRAID OF ITS OWN FUTURE,’ WANTS IT TO EMBRACE MAMDANI STRATEGYHe continued, “It’s a good thing. It’s a good luxury to be able to look back and be like that moderate, that dude who droned people and didn’t get healthcare passed the way that we wanted, that’s a great ability to have in 2025, because it means that things that he did get done are moderate by definition today because the needle was moved.”Penn denied that Obama could have been more “radical” during his term in office, arguing that it was difficult given the limited powers of the presidency.OBAMA SWIPES AT AFFLUENT LIBERALS DURING RARE PUBLIC REMARKS, SAYS ‘ALL OF US ARE GOING TO BE TESTED'”The problem with this question is that the reality was he couldn’t be wildly radical, right? So even the Affordable Care Act at the time, even though the initial…

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