President Obama Baits Karl Rove By Saying He Might Have Had a ‘Mild Concussion’

Last updated on June 5th, 2014 at 11:44 pm

barack obama sotu

The big boys in the White House are just mocking Karl Rove now.

Much fun has been had at Rove’s expense after he tried to poison the Hillary Clinton well by suggesting she had brain damage based on nothing but his hopes.

So on Thursday, unobtrusively tucked into a talk the President was giving about the dangers of concussions before the White House Healthy Kids & Safe Sports Concussion Summit Panel, he said he had probably had multiple “mild” concussions when he played sports.

This part of the President’s speech was “off script”, per the White House pooler, who could see Obama’s teleprompter.

The President said (per the White House transcript, my bold):

The reason we’re here today, though, is all across the country parents are also having a more troubling conversation, and that’s about the risks of concussions. There’s a lot of concern, but there’s a lot of uncertainty. And as Tori’s story suggests, concussions are not just a football issue. They don’t just affect grown men who choose to accept some risk to play a game that they love and that they excel at. Every season, you’ve got boys and girls who are getting concussions in lacrosse and soccer and wrestling and ice hockey, as well as football. And, in fact, the Center for Disease Control reports that in the most recent data that’s available to us, young people made nearly 250,000 emergency room visits with brain injuries from sports and recreation — 250,000. That number obviously doesn’t include kids who see their family doctor or, as is typical, don’t seek any medical help.

Before the awareness was out there, when I was young and played football briefly, there were a couple of times where I’m sure that that ringing sensation in my head and the need to sit down for a while might have been a mild concussion, and at the time you didn’t think anything of it. The awareness is improved today, but not by much. So the total number of young people who are impacted by this early on is probably bigger than we know.

Now, I say this not to scare people. We want our kids participating in sports. I’d be much more troubled if young people were shying away from sports. As parents, though, we want to keep them safe, and that means we have to have better information. We have to know what these issues are. And the fact is, we don’t have solid numbers, and that tells me that at every level we’re all still trying to fully grasp what’s going on with this issue.

President Obama is the King of Invisible Baiting, especially when he’s got someone’s number and he has Karl Rove’s number. He always comes out looking incredibly innocent, because he bides his time and drops the bait in the middle of something else, almost as if by accident.

He played Senator John McCain and his running mate Gov. Sarah Palin so perfectly, you just knew he would be a shrewd diplomat. Lipstick on a pig, anyone?

Obama enjoys basketball, and this looks like a perfect 2016 assist from a solid team player. He’s got Hillary’s back, in other words. So if Karl Rove wants to play pick on Hillary Clinton, he better be prepared to be the butt of President Obama’s brutally accurate jokes and brilliant baiting, in addition to former President Bill Clinton’s wrath. And then the powerhouse that is Hillary Clinton.

If it were me, I wouldn’t antagonize three of the most powerful people in the country in the hopes of dragging one of them down. After all, a clever person would never declare open war on political war veterans who had already bested them. But I’m not one of the people who ever thought Karl Rove was clever. Wily, yes. Manipulative and effective, yes. But not clever.

This is what happens when smear artist bullies go up against real political brains.

How long will it be until Republicans on Fox “News” call for an investigation into President Obama’s “brain damage”? Just a few Benghazi email-ish leaks to the press about Republican aides’ observations of the President dizzy on his feet and confused — and impeachment!!! predictable egg on their face.

Five… Four… Three…

Sarah Jones
Follow Me


Copyright PoliticusUSA LLC 2008-2023