“When they’re near him, they lose their minds sometimes. They start behaving in ways that are juvenile, and amateurish, and they swoon.”

Michael Hastings, the late investigative journalist and contributor to Rolling Stone, said this in a 2013 interview with msnbc (emphasis added throughout). He was talking about the way the press corps reacted to former President Barack Obama. Hastings even commented that he had also been caught up in this behavior around the former president. The interviewer asked him if he had ever acted that way in Obama’s presence, and he replied, “I do. I totally—oh man!”

Recent revelations from James Comey show that Hastings and the press corps weren’t the only ones affected. Throughout all levels of government and the media, President Obama’s charisma and control were evident—and they’re becoming more and more evident as time goes on. I talked about this on my radio show on April 17, which you can listen to here:

Yes, everyone loved President Obama—just as much as they correspondingly hate President Trump. This was one of the things that caught my attention in Comey’s five-hour interview with abc’s George Stephanopoulos last week.

Comey was very open in his interview about the way he felt about President Obama. He talked about his final meeting with President Obama, during the transition period before the inauguration of President Trump. Comey said:

[President Obama] held me back after one of the very last meetings I had with him, after the election, and said … “But I want to just tell you something generally. I appointed you to be fbi director because of your integrity and your ability.” And then he looked me in the eye and he said, “Nothing has happened, nothing, in the last year that has changed my view of that.”

And, look, he wasn’t telling me, “I agree with what you did.” He wasn’t telling me, “You made the right decision.” He was telling me, “I know where it came from. I know you’re not a partisan hack. I know you’re trying to do the right thing.” And it meant a lot to me. I mean, I had not been a political supporter of President Obama’s. I came to deeply respect him, and his higher loyalty to the values I care a lot about. And I—I almost got emotional in that moment ’cause, … having the president of the United States say, “I still respect you for the reasons I did originally,” meant a lot to me.

That is a revealing exchange. Yes, it is true that Comey was in a difficult position in 2016. Hillary Clinton was going forward as the Democratic presidential nominee. It looked like she was going to win. He had to find a way to walk the tightrope—making sure that Clinton wasn’t convicted, while still giving the appearance that he wasn’t taking sides. So it meant a lot to him that President Obama, a man he “deeply respected,” said that he knew Comey wasn’t a partisan hack. Quite the pat on the back from an outgoing president.

Comey also said that he told the president, “I think my wife would kill me if I didn’t take this chance to thank you, and to tell you how much I’m going to miss you.”

Compare this with the way Comey talked about President Trump in the same interview. He called President Trump a mafia boss! Comey told Stephanopoulos that Trump “turned” on him after Comey criticized Trump for not speaking out more strongly against Russian President Vladimir Putin in February 2017.

But the real story here is not when President Trump supposedly turned against Comey, but when Comey and many other agents, investigators and bureaucrats at the Department of Justice and Federal Bureau of Investigation turned on President Trump. That happened long before Donald Trump even became president!

In the same interview, Comey said in that last meeting with President Obama that he told the outgoing president, “I dread the next four years. But in many ways, I feel great pressure to stay to try and protect the institution I lead.”

Why would the fbi director dread the next four years? He said, “Well, I had some sense of the nature and character of the new president of the United States. And I worried very much that there would be an effort to erode the independence of the fbi.”

So Comey had deep, deep respect for President Obama. He saw Barack Obama as a loyal man who had the same values he did. He told him he was going to miss him. But President Trump, in Comey’s mind, was a mob boss!

Who turned on who?

And think about this: Comey’s final meeting with Obama would have been at the same time he was directing the investigation of Donald Trump. He authorized the fisa applications that opened the way for the fbi to tap phones at Trump Tower. And this was while Obama was still president!

Comey talked a lot in his interview about how disappointed he was in President Trump’s reaction to the news of Russia’s probable election meddling. Apparently, President Trump was mostly worried about the public relations angle of the story, instead of asking what could be done about it.

But here again, it’s the Obama administration that stood down while Russia meddled—not Trump. As cnn reported in March, the White House director of global engagement, Brett Bruen, warned the Obama administration back in 2014 that Russia would meddle in U.S. elections, just like it had done in Ukraine. And when it happened in 2016, it was Barack Obama who was more concerned about public relations than he was about fighting back! He and his officials thought that Hillary Clinton had the election in the bag, and they didn’t want to shake the faith of the American people in the U.S. election process. As cnn reported, “Whatever the reason, the warning of the looming Russia threat was not shared across the Obama administration.”

According to the new book, The Inside Story of Putin’s War on America and the Election of Donald Trump, Obama’s national security adviser, Susan Rice, knew all about Putin’s attack on America’s election process. She reportedly told White House cybersecurity officials to “stand down” and stop working on cyberespionage countermeasures. She didn’t want them to get out in front of the president on this sensitive issue.

As we now know, President Obama knew all about Russian meddling, but he opted not to do anything about it because he was certain Hillary would win. And he didn’t want to draw attention to anything that might cast doubt on the election result.

Comey writes in his new book about his “higher loyalty” to his ideals. But where is Comey’s higher loyalty, really? The evidence shows that there is no higher loyalty than to Barack Obama. The deep state has spoken: President Obama was a saint, but President Trump is a morally unfit mafia boss who must be removed from office by any means necessary.

Barack Obama has been out of office for over a year now, but the swooning continues. At the same time, President Trump is being vilified and viciously attacked from every direction. My father wrote in a recent article: “Something diabolical was going on until Mr. Trump was elected—and it is still going on behind the scenes during his presidency. And the media aided and abetted the whole process! The more stories that come out, the clearer this ugly reality becomes.”

If you want to understand more about this issue, please read my father’s booklet America Under Attack. It was written in early 2013, but it gains deeper meaning in light of recent revelations. You can also request a copy of his booklet Great Again. All of our literature is free.