Michael Savage is a super-talented pontificator of nonsense.
The areas to which President Barack Obama is open to legitimate and scathing criticism are almost endless, but the host of the 4th most-listened to radio show in the country bypasses the obvious for the unbelievable.
“What worries me, Jamie, in regards to what you just said, is that one of President Obama’s mentors was Abraham Lincoln,” Savage told The Daily Caller earlier this month in an interview about his new book, calmly named, “Stop The Coming Civil War.”
“He imprisoned 20,000 political opponents, including journalists, who opposed the Civil War. People don’t know that about Lincoln. And 20,000 people in the 1860s would be what today? Two million or more? And if he is one Obama’s mentors is it hard to comprehend that the same might happen here under Obama?”
It is, in fact, pretty hard to comprehend, even if there are real and serious criticisms of the way the Obama administration had dealt with the press. But this is Savage’s MO. He is quick to paint Obama not just as a failed president who has too often subverted Congress and abused his power in order to implement his agenda, but as an out-and-out tyrant in the mold of Joseph Stalin.
“Just as Stalin purged his generals, albeit in a more bloody manner, Obama has been purging the military,” Savage said, comparing Obama to one of history most evil monsters, while suggesting – falsely – that he has forced 8,000 officers from the military for political reasons.
Given his alarmist view of Obama, it is not so surprising that Savage believes the president might try to instigate some type of insurrection in order to grab even more power.
“My worst fear is that they are going to provoke an insurrection in this country as a pretext to aggrandize more power and possibly start taking more liberties with the Second Amendment,” he said
But have no fear. Savage’s book presents a solution to the Obama problem: vote Republican in November.
“I focus in ‘Stop The Coming Civil War’ on these attacks on our schools, on our borders, our language, our culture, our military,” he said. “And I focus on it for one reason: We have 30 days to save America. Why do I say that? It is as simple as this: We have to throw every Democrat out and we have to put in the opposition party.”
If you’re scratching your head at this solution given the problem he diagnosed, you’re not alone. If Obama is Stalin-lite, why would he care if the Republicans controlled the Senate?
“Well, you make a very valid point,” Savage said. “But let’s see what happens if the so-called Republicans win and they pass laws that he and his merry band of pranksters don’t like, let’s see what happens then.”
When pressed to follow his wild theories to their logical conclusion, Savage backs off a bit, seemingly unwilling to go too far into Alex Jones-land, at least when not actually speaking to Alex Jones.
“Well, I wouldn’t go that far because we don’t know what he is going to do in two years. I know what he is doing right now,” Savage says when asked whether he believes the president is angling to hold onto power indefinitely, as Stalin-esque leaders tend to do.
“I don’t know. I can’t even think that far ahead,” he said, when pressed on the same question later in the interview. “I don’t know what he can or cannot do. I do know that anything is possible because if someone would have said that he wouldn’t limit flights from an Ebola area and he wouldn’t get away with it, I‘d say your crazy.”
A 2009 profile in the New Yorker paints Savage, who was born Michael Weiner, as a man with a deeply pessimistic outlook. So it is possible he believes the over-the-top theories he spouts.
And it is not like Savage gets everything wrong. As Obama approaches year seven of his presidency, polling suggests most Americans agree with Savage that the Obama experience has been something less than an outstanding success. Beyond all its evident failures, it’s even possible that a smoking gun will emerge that will tie the administration more closely — even criminally — to something like the IRS’s targeting of tea party groups.
But like deranged liberals during the George W. Bush years, Savage isn’t content to paint Obama merely as a failure with a discredited worldview whose policies have made America weaker. He must be something more nefarious, more apocalyptic. In Savage’s telling, Obama is working with his elite friends to create a “New World Order,” one “without any borders, without any single language, without a single cultural identity.”
“This is part of the New World Order in the sense of the new Soviet world. It’s sort of emerging like a new Soviet world ruled by a power elite,” he says.
If so, the emerging New World Order has been pretty good for the Savage family. If Obama is Stalin-lite, the “lite” must stand for a willingness by Obama to allow his critics and their kin to prosper wildly instead of being sent to the gulags. Savage has earned millions during the age of Obama, and his son, Russell Weiner, has earned billions.
“I have no comment on anyone in my family. Any other questions,” Savage says when asked about his boy’s phenomenal feat.
Forbes magazine estimates that Russ, the founder of Rockstar Energy Drink, is worth $2.5 billion. Savage celebrated the coming release of his book in August on his son’s 165-foot yacht.
So does Savage at least admit that some of his rhetoric is for show? That he sometimes says things — like, say, we will face a civil war in 30 days if Republicans don’t win the Senate — to shock his audience?
“I don’t know. You would have to ask the audience what they think,” Savage said. “People interpret things in different ways. One man’s shock is another man’s awe.”
