Obama: I’m Not Trying to ‘Kill Christmas’

The official White House Christmas Tree sits in the Blue Room of the White House November
Alex Wong/Getty Images

President Barack Obama claims conservative commentators including Rush Limbaugh are hypocritical when it comes to political correctness, citing the ongoing controversy about saying “Merry Christmas” instead of “Happy Holidays.”

“Look, I had to live through controversies like the notion that I was trying to kill Christmas … Right? Well, where’d that come from?” he asked with disbelief.

Obama said that conservative Christians accused him of “not being a Christian or not caring about Christmas” because he chose to say “Happy Holidays.”

“The irony in this debate is often-times you’ll hear somebody like a Rush Limbaugh, or other conservative commentators, or you know, radio shock jocks, or some conservative politicians, who are very quick to jump on any evidence of progressives being ‘politically correct,’ but who are constantly aggrieved and hypersensitive about the things they care about, and are continually feeding this sense of victimization, and that they are being subject to reverse discrimination,” Obama said.

He suggested that more conservatives were participating in a culture that highlighted grievances instead of being open minded inclusive.

“It sounds funny now, but you’ll have entire debates in conservative circles around that,” he said. “So it cuts both ways.”

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