Obama: ‘We Don’t Use the Federal Government to Simply Reward Our Friends and Punish Our Enemies’

Obama: “The point is that we have blown through, just in the last six months, a whole range of not simply assumptions, but rules and laws and practices that were put in place to ensure that nobody is above the law and that we don’t use the federal government to simply reward our friends and punish our enemies. And the same thing is obviously happening in the Justice Department. So, people are right to be concerned. The interesting thing and what I’ve been trying to do when I’m speaking about this publicly, is just to remind folks, just as was true during the McCarthy era and has been true throughout our history, what’s required in these situations is a few folks standing up and giving courage to other folks, and then more people stand up and kind of go, like, yeah, that’s — that’s not who we are. That’s not — that’s not our idea of America. We don’t want masked folks with rifles and machine guns patrolling our streets.”

MARON: “Yeah.”

Obama: “You know, we — we want — we want cops on the beat who know the —“

MARON: “Neighborhood.”

Obama: “— know the neighborhood and the kids around, and that’s how we keep the peace around here.”