August 28, 2014 might as well be known in liberal America as Tan Suit Day, that day where former President Obama wore a tan suit. On the five year anniversary of Tan Suit Day, liberal journalists and commentators on CNN and MSNBC took to the airwaves to reminisce about that day, which they claimed -- in contradiction of the facts -- that this was somehow "the biggest scandal of the entire Obama presidency."
MSNBC Live guest host Chris Jansing got the Tan Suit Day festivities going towards the end of her 2:00 Eastern show. After criticizing Republicans for their reaction, playing some man-on-the-street interviews to paint Republicans as out of touch, and showing some memes, Jansing declared, "But in all seriousness, what a difference five years makes as the Washington Post puts it 'Five years later, however, Tan Suit Gate has taken on a different meaning, coming to symbolize the relative dearth of scandals during the Obama administration... On social media just about every news item about potential conflicts of interest within the Trump Administration and the president's flouting of norms is met with some variant of remember when Obama wore a tan suit.' I do."
The "relative dearth of scandals" is a reflection on partisan media relativism.
Towards the end of his 6:00 show, Ari Melber also longed for the days of Obama's tan suit, "Fast forward five years. Donald Trump has reportedly floated the idea of nuking hurricanes, detaining migrant children indefinitely, offering pardons to aides who break the law and hosting a world summit at his own resort. And that's just in the last week alone. But today we look back at the tan suit and how President Obama responded, joking about at his final press conference." Before signing off, Melber declared that those were "the good old days."
During the 8:00 hour, All In host Chris Hayes mocked the outrage over the suit, "And on this day on 2014 we saw the biggest scandal of the entire Obama presidency, the tan suit." Ridiculous.
After a commercial, Hayes added "President Obama learned the valuable lesson that day. He never wore that suit again. Tan just isn't the right color for a man of such stature, tan is more of the color a president might wear when he is belly up to the breakfast bar, about to horse down an omelette before golf, because that's how you crush ISIS."
Over at CNN towards the end of the 9:00 hour, Chris Cuomo went to commercial teasing, "Let's go back into the time machine. The days before everybody lied every two seconds. Remember what used to piss people off about a president. It was about what he wore, that was our big kerfuffle five years ago, oh how things have changed."
After returning from commercial, Cuomo declared that, "Five years ago the President of the United States shocked the world. The fashionistas on Fox, not quite state TV back then, they were all over it." After playing a video from NowThis, Cuomo was joined by fellow CNN host Don Lemon. Before asking Lemon to comment, Cuomo remarked "Boy, what a difference five years makes. Now we're in these existential battles about truth and falsity and people refusing to admit thousands and thousands of lies. And then it was a suit." Lemon responded also by reminiscing and holding up some papers that appear to be from his e-mail inbox stating that Trump has lied 48 times in the past six days.
The next hour on his own show, Lemon remembered the Obama era fondly "Those are the days, right? That was a scandal. The day that President Barack Obama gave a news conference at the White House in all anybody could talk about was his tan suit. The horror."
Unfortunately for the media, no amount of love for Obama can re-write history. As part of a settlement the IRS admitted to unfairly scrutinizing conservative groups. The Obama Justice Department seized Fox reporter James Rosen's e-mails by labeling him a co-conspirator in a leak investigation under the Espionage Act. There are other scandals and notable lies such as Project Cassandra, Hillary Clinton's private e-mail server, and PolitiFact's 2013 Lie of the Year.
There was that time where the American people who lied to about a terrorist attack on the 11th anniversary of 9/11 that left the U.S. Ambassador to Libya murdered, in order to fit a re-election narrative and to shield Hillary Clinton's State Department from congressional scrutiny. Finally in the worst Obama scandal, a Border Patrol agent was murdered with a gun that the DOJ allowed to walk into Mexico, the DOJ then stonewalled Congressional investigators, leading to the Attorney General being held in contempt of Congress.
As bad as tan suits are, the fact that the media actually believes the tan suit was the worst thing about the Obama presidency says more about them than any conservative or Fox News freak out over the suit.
