Andy Williams

Then: Barack Obama “wants the country to fail.” Now: “He might be guiding us in the wrong direction.” Legendary singer Andy Williams has backed off the sharp edge of his criticism of President Obama. About three weeks after he told a British magazine “Obama is following Marxist theory” and “wants the country to fail,” Williams, prompted by ABC's Chris Cuomo on Tuesday's Good Morning America to agree he was “taken out of context,” concurred: “Well that's taken out of context, a lot of it.” Williams complained “it was an interview that I made to a reporter by phone in London and it just got blown out of proportion.”

The singer, on the ABC show to promote the release of his new book, 'Moon River and Me : A Memoir,' tried to get back in the good graces of liberals and Obama fans: “I think Obama's the most-charismatic politician that we've seen since John F. Kennedy.” Recalling he “voted for many Democratic Presidents,” he assured viewers “I have nothing absolutely against a liberal Democrat,” though he still allowed “I just think sometimes, like a lot of Americans, that he might be guiding us in the wrong direction.”

He concluded by dismissing the relevance of his opinion: “But that's just from a singer. It really doesn't mean much.” To which the small audience, inside GMA's Times Square studio, laughed.

President Barack Obama “wants the country to fail,” legendary singer Andy Williams declared in flipping Rush Limbaugh's hope that Obama “fails” in his quest to enact left-wing policies, a remark which enraged liberals and the media for weeks. In an interview published in the October 3-9 edition of Radio Times magazine, the TV and radio program guide for the BBC which carries re-runs of Williams' 1960s NBC variety show, the 81-year-old Williams didn't hide his feelings about Obama: “Don't like him at all.”

London's Telegraph, in a September 28 article highlighted by the DrudgeReport, quoted from the interview which is not online. Williams starkly denounced Obama's world view:

I think he wants to create a socialist country. The people he associates with are very left-wing. One is registered as a communist. Obama is following Marxist theory. He's taken over the banks and the car industry. He wants the country to fail.