Politics

Obama Took A Not-So-Subtle Swipe At Hillary Over Her 1994 ‘Super Predators’ Remarks [VIDEO]

Christian Datoc Senior White House Correspondent
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Former President Barack Obama took a subtle swipe at his former secretary of state Hillary Clinton while speaking at the University of Chicago on Monday.

Barack Obama (Getty Images)

Barack Obama (Getty Images)

In his first public remarks since leaving the White house, Obama talked about the “stereotypical profile of somebody who has a good likelihood of shooting or getting shot here in Chicago.”

“That’s part of the violence that has been plaguing the city,” he added before stating the need to empathize with people, rather than “[characterizing] as something entirely different than us.”

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“What was striking when you sat down with these guys was they are young people,” Obama continued. “If you had listened to them talking, you would recognize them as not that different from any other young man 18 to 24. What was different was their circumstances.”

“They had grown up in some cases in foster care or their mother was a drug addict and they had been neglected, so even within the city boundaries a lot of times we will characterize our neighbors as something entirely different than us, that we can’t understand and that we are afraid of and we can’t communicate with. Political rhetoric reinforces that. They need to be heard too.”

Barack Obama (Getty Images)

Barack Obama (Getty Images)

“If the six of you had been in that conversation,” Obama said to the group of young people also taking part in the panel, “You would have come away not saying, ‘these are some thugs or super predators that I can’t relate to.’ You would actually say, ‘man, if I had gone through what they went through, I’m not sure how things would have worked out for me, either.'”

“That creation of empathy then promises a different kind of civic response and political response than the one so often we have.”

Though Obama did not mention Clinton by name, his decision to use “super predator” is telling.

Clinton heavily utilized the term while speaking in support of her husband’s 1994 crime bill, for which she was heavily criticized and eventually apologized for during the middle of her 2016 presidential campaign.

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