Obama, Huffington Post Feud Heats Up: President Says ‘Don’t Read’ Liberal News Outlet

President Obama and Huffington Post are not exactly the two parties you think of when it comes to being locked in a war of words, but it appears that is now changing, as the President has told House Democrats to avoid reading the left-leaning news site.

What’s the skirmish over? Trade deals.

The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) deal, which Obama champions in a rare show of agreement with his GOP rivals in Congress, would undermine his commitment to the middle class, the news site notes.

“The fact that President Obama got so worked up over analysis of the HuffPost criticizing his trade agenda, I think that it says something,” Global Trade Watch research director Ben Beachy said Friday. “I think what it says is Obama is having to reckon with the difficult reality that his trade agenda directly conflicts with and undermines his stated middle class economics agenda.”

The site’s Washington bureau chief, Ryan Grim, said his employer’s “concurrence with Obama’s overarching goals are the very reason for its criticism of his trade policy,” and points out that some have said it would add to more income inequality.

“When The Huffington Post, for instance, is so critical of Wall Street policy or somebody like Larry Summers or somebody like Antonio Weiss … [Obama] knows that we’re coming from a place of sympathy with the goals of expanding opportunity, of trying to reduce poverty,” Grim said. “You’re generally finding agreements about the ends [but not the means].”

The Obama Huffington Post feud began when the news site struck back at the president’s claim that the TPP would create jobs, noting that it would “likely result in a pay decrease for workers who make less than $80,000 per year.”

Obama has stated that if this was the Civil War, HuffPo would be criticizing President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation freeing the slaves because it didn’t go far enough instead of being supportive of the headway that the law made in ending slavery for good.

But HuffPo is not alone in its criticisms of the president’s plan. According to a recent report from the Washington Post, the job gains that Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry have touted are “illusionary” at best.

Columnist Glenn Kessler gave a detailed rundown of why the administration’s claims of TPP creating 650,000 jobs are grossly exaggerated, giving it “four Pinocchio’s on a scale of four.”

“Our advice remains: be wary whenever a politician claims a policy will yield bountiful jobs. In this case, the correct number is zero (in the long run), not 650,000, according to the very study used to calculate this number. Administration officials earn Four Pinocchios for their fishy math.”

Do you think the Obama Huffington Post feud is sour grapes from left media for the president working with Republicans, or is there something to the criticism?

[Image via American Spirit / Shutterstock.com]