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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.”
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He 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.
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“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 point of it was actually like a conservative model, but even then he barely got the Democratic votes to get it passed. And in retrospect, we’re like, ‘that’s all we got?,'” Penn said.
Despite his defense of the former president, Penn acknowledged that he was also “disillusioned” by the administration over certain issues, such as the failure to close Guantánamo Bay.
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“People have a right to be disappointed. People have a right to celebrate,” Penn said.
Obama has criticized the progressive wing in his party for alienating voters, such as young men.
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“I will say, as quote-unquote progressives, Democrats, progressive parents, enlightened ones, we’ve made that mistake sometimes in terms of our rhetoric, where it’s like we’re constantly talking about it, you know, what’s going on with the boys instead of what’s right with them,” Obama said in July.