The reply is referring to Operation Fast and Furious, a real and very controversial ATF gun-trafficking operation during the Obama administration.
But the Tumblr framing is muddying together a few different claims.
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives allowed suspected straw purchasers to buy firearms with the hope of tracking cartel networks.
Many weapons were lost track of instead of being interdicted.
Some of those guns later turned up at crime scenes in Mexico and the U.S.
One was found near the murder scene of Border Patrol agent Brian Terry in 2010.
That became a major scandal and led to congressional investigations, contempt proceedings involving Attorney General Eric Holder, and years of partisan fighting.
But “Obama sold guns to the cartels” is still a rhetorical compression. The administration wasn’t literally arming cartels as policy; it was a failed law-enforcement strategy intended to track trafficking networks.
And the “Obama had no scandals except tan suit” meme exists because liberals were mocking what they saw as disproportionate outrage over trivial things like:
Critics respond that this memory-wipes:
the ACA rollout problems,
So the real disagreement is less “were there scandals?” and more:
which controversies people think were substantive,
and whether media coverage treated Obama more gently or more harshly than other presidents.
How was Benghazi Obama's fault?
Benghazi isn’t best understood as “Obama did X and caused it,” because it wasn’t a single-point failure. It was an attack on a U.S. diplomatic compound in Libya in 2012 during a period of extreme instability after the 2011 NATO intervention.
The event refers to the attack on the U.S. diplomatic facility in Benghazi, Libya, where Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans were killed.
What the controversy was actually about
Criticism of the Obama administration focused on several different layers:
1. Security decisions before the attack
The compound had known security risks.
Some State Department officials were criticized for not providing enough protection or reinforcing the site.
This is usually the strongest substantive criticism: not “Obama ordered something wrong,” but “U.S. diplomatic security posture in Libya was insufficient.”
2. The initial public explanation
Early statements suggested the attack grew out of protests tied to an anti-Islam video.
Later intelligence indicated it was a coordinated militant attack.
This created a political controversy about whether the administration “misled” the public, though investigations generally found it was more confusion in the immediate aftermath of a chaotic event than a deliberate cover-up.
3. Political use of the event afterward
Republicans in Congress launched multiple investigations.
The House Select Committee on Benghazi spent years examining emails, timelines, and decisions.
Critics argued it became heavily politicized beyond the actual operational failures.
There is no credible evidence that Obama personally ordered or directed anything that caused the attack.
It wasn’t a single presidential decision failure like “he did X and therefore Benghazi happened.”
There were legitimate questions about security planning and diplomatic risk assessment in Libya.
There was confusion and political dispute over the initial public narrative.
The event became a long-running partisan controversy that often exceeded the scale of the underlying operational failure.
So when people say “Benghazi was Obama’s fault,” they’re usually compressing a bureaucratic and security failure into a single political blame point — which doesn’t really reflect how these incidents typically happen in practice.
tangentwithtanner
kianamaiart
s-u-f-j-a-n-s-t-e-v-e-n-s
yousharknotpass
amandla
blakekathryn
