https://www.wsj.com/articles/another-obama-lecture-11605567605?mod=opinion_lead_pos10
Former President Barack Obama, who presided over historic abuses of government surveillance powers, is once again attacking one of the principal targets. Four years after the Obama Justice Department misled a federal court into approving a surveillance warrant against a Trump campaign associate, Mr. Obama is comparing President Donald Trump to a murderous dictator.
Asked in a Sunday interview for the CBS News program “60 Minutes” about Mr. Trump’s claims of voter fraud in the recent election, Mr. Obama responded:
The president doesn’t like to lose and– never admits loss. I’m more troubled by the fact that other Republican officials who clearly know better are going along with this, are humoring him in this fashion. It is one more step in delegitimizing not just the incoming Biden administration, but democracy generally… I think that there has been this sense over the last several years that literally anything goes and is justified in order to get power. And that’s not unique to the United States. There are strong men and dictators around the world who think that, “I can do anything to stay in power. I can kill people. I can throw them in jail. I can run phony elections. I can suppress journalists.” But that’s not who we’re supposed to be.
Whatever one thinks of Mr. Trump’s claims—or Mr. Obama’s over-the-top comparison to dictators—Mr. Pelley has chosen one of America’s least credible advocates for presidential restraint.
Bradford Betz of Fox News reasonably notes:
…Obama’s time in office was by no means the paragon of a presidency bound by the rules of a liberal democratic republic. Court documents released in early 2013 showed that the Obama administration secretly monitored Fox News’ James Rosen – whom the FBI dubbed a “criminal co-conspirator,” despite never being charged with a crime…
Though Trump has been forceful in his denunciation of the press, the Obama administration arguably went further, evoking the Espionage Act to prosecute more people under the law for leaking sensitive information than all previous administrations combined.