President Barack Obama provoked the government shutdown and would have allowed a default in a bid to further discredit Republicans, according to Edward Klein, author of "The Amateur: Barack Obama in the White House," just out in paperback.
"The strategy to demonize the Republicans over the shutdown [is] just like [the] demonizing [of] Mitt Romney and before him, McCain, during election campaigns," Klein told "The Steve Malzberg Show" on Newsmax TV.
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"The shutdown was something he welcomed, that he encouraged, that he provoked, and that he kept going because he saw [it] as in his interest, with the media playing it as an anti-Republican problem.
"He would have allowed the country to go over the cliff, and if he did, he would have gotten on television sets, pointed his finger and said, 'All those extremists' fault, and if you want to change the nature of this country and make it better, you better vote for Democrats in 2014!"'
Klein, former editor-in-chief of The New York Times Magazine, believes it is ironic that Obama once taught constitutional law.
"He doesn't seem to have the first idea of what the Constitution does, which is quite simply that there are three separate and equal branches of government and in order for the president to get anything done he needs to – I hate to use this word, Mr. Obama – negotiate with Congress before there's shutdown and [a] debt ceiling crisis and all of the media coverage," Klein said.
"But this president, unlike every single president we've had in the past, he either refuses to negotiate or does everything by executive order.
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