Obama just gets slicker with age.
Now that he doesn’t have to worry about hordes of press hounding him wherever he goes, the nation’s former chief executive can really take the time to polish every word of his post-presidency speeches like this one, for which he was paid a paltry $13,333 per minute. Surely, that large a fee should be able to inspire some talk about income inequality, yes?
But income inequality was only one of the topics the former president was quick to address, as well as warnings about President Trump and platitudes about the Paris Climate Accords, which he described as “nations coming together” — rather than “nations extorting the United States,” as they might be better termed.
Obama claimed the voluntary Paris agreement was “ambitious.” Of course, for the United States it might have been, but for China, Russia and India, which did not have to abide by any of the treaty’s major commitments until 2030, the agreement was little more than wishful thinking that could easily have been rejected for technical reasons at an appropriate moment in the future.
Why should the U.S. have had to pay countries such as these $100 billion when China’s economy is set to surpass the U.S.’s next year, and India’s economy is not far behind? Watch as Obama proves once again that a carefully crafted speech is worth every dollar its sponsors pony up.
