Chicago City Wire

Steve Cortes, president of the League of American Workers, said that perceptions of race relations deteriorated significantly during Barack Obama's tenure. The statement was made on a Prairie State Wire podcast.

"We went from 70% of Americans saying that race relations were getting better when he enters office to almost 70% saying getting worse when he left office," said Cortes.

During Barack Obama’s presidency, public optimism about race relations in the United States declined sharply, as reported by Pew Research Center. While many Americans felt hopeful at the start of Obama’s first term, a series of high-profile events and debates about policing and systemic injustice led to a growing sense of pessimism. By the end of his presidency, a majority of Americans described race relations as "generally bad," reflecting a significant shift in public sentiment according to Pew.

According to Gallup, in 2009 about 66% of Americans viewed race relations positively, but this figure fell to 47% by 2016. The sharp decline coincided with national debates on racial justice and several controversial incidents, highlighting a dramatic increase in public pessimism about race relations during Obama’s years in office as tracked by Gallup survey data.

Pew Research Center data shows that before Obama’s presidency, 72% of Americans saw race relations as generally good in 2004, while this number dropped to 44% by 2016. Additionally, the percentage who believed more changes were needed to achieve racial equality rose from 77% in 2007 to 84% in 2017, signaling a marked shift in American attitudes about race over the decade, as reported by Pew.

Cortes is a political commentator, author, and strategist known for his conservative perspective and frequent commentary on both economic and social issues. According to Executive Speakers Bureau, he has appeared on networks such as CNN and Fox News and has advocated for populist policies while speaking out on topics like race relations and immigration.

___________

FULL, UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT

Brian Hyde: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Prairie State Wire Podcast. I'm Brian Hyde, and today I'm joined by Steve Cortez. Steve is the founder and president of the League of American Workers, and also a senior political advisor at Catholic Vote. He's a former senior advisor to President Trump and JD Vans, a commentator for Fox News and CNN.

And Steve, I've also seen some pretty amazing documentary work that you're doing. Welcome to the program. 

Steve Cortes: Hey Brian, thank you for having me. Appreciate it. 

Brian Hyde: Okay. Did I leave off anything that you would would want people to know about you before we start talking about some of the topics we're gonna cover today?

Steve Cortes: Well, the only thing I might add for a Prairie State Podcast is that I'm basically a lifelong Chicagoan, born and raised in the Chicago area, born and raised in Chicago Heights, raised a family in the city of Chicago. Have left mainly because of the policy problems, unfortunately, of the city and state, and now live in Tennessee.

But I still very much consider myself, uh, a Chicagoan at heart. 

Brian Hyde: Well, and we're gonna be talking about a, a Chicagoan who sprung onto the scene here just a few years back and has made some waves and has since been operating [00:01:00] in the background. Although it, it's safe to say he probably hasn't retired. That would be of course, Barack Obama.

Talk to me a little bit about, for those who aren't familiar with Barack Obama's experience in his way up through the ranks, where did it all begin? 

Steve Cortes: Yeah, well, his professional life really did begin in Chicago, so he has no roots in Chicago before that. Born and raised, primarily in Hawaii and all over the world.

I went to elite universities out east in the Northeast, Columbia University, Harvard Law School. But after that, I. Then came to Chicago to be a community organi organizer. And of course, many people, quite rightly say, what the heck is that? It's almost whatever you want it to be. But in Barack Obama's case, it was working for NGOs, non-governmental organizations, the kind which are thankfully now being defunded, frankly, that we taxpayer support, but leftist organizations that at least as a front pretend to be charities, pretend to be community activists, assistance organizations, but in fact are pushing really toxic.

Political and cultural agendas for society and, and doing so in his [00:02:00] case, primarily on the south side of Chicago and primarily in within the black community. So I think smart guy, tons of charisma as anybody knows who's watched him in the political realm as every American knows, did reasonably well within that world, but kind of unknown.

Through a series of events, and I don't won't go through all the details, but whether he was lucky or smart or some combination of, I'd like to argue, it was just a ton of luck. Found himself from being a pretty unknown state legislator in Illinois, even in Chicago, where I then lived and was into politics, really had heard his name, but knew nothing about him.

Pretty unknown guy to very suddenly a US senator. Still not widely known, but the great financial crisis of 2008. Really thrusts or, or really, really compels the entire US political system into a lot of chaos. Tremendous dissatisfaction, of course, with the Bush administration. The first, or excuse me, the second Bush administration at that point, George W.

Bush, and, and really opening up what seemed at first be. A relatively predictable democratic primary into being a, a wide open affair. And this young charismatic senator [00:03:00] from Chicago ends up winning the Democratic nomination and I think largely 'cause of the financial crisis wins the presidency. So that's his, and, and at least while president claimed very much his Chicago roots and claimed to be a Chicago and always wore a White Sox hat anytime he could.

Oh, we talked a lot about Chicago has, has. PE spent almost no time, and I would argue zero effort in Chicago since being president. But it was significant to his rise and his, and his earning the presidency. 

Brian Hyde: It's fascinating too, and you mentioned that he, he ran as a man of the people, I mean Oh, I'm just one of you.

But clearly he moves very comfortably through the, the ranks of the very elite and very well connected to many times unelected individuals. Yep. 

Steve Cortes: He sure does. And that's both personally and in terms of policy and the policy side there is be more important of course. One of the things that I've pointed out many times over the years, and this is from Federal Reserve data, this isn't my, my opinion, from Federal Reserve data.

During the eight years of his presidency, only the top 10% of American earners saw their net worth increase. That's it. 90% of [00:04:00] Americans went backwards during his presidency. Black Americans went down 30%. Their net worth declined 30% over his eight years. And the reason I say over the eight years is. It's understandable that there were tough times when he first took Oz, 'cause he did inherit an economic mess.

I'll absolutely grant him that. However, over a period of eight years, there should, you should never have a situation where 90% of America is going backwards in terms of their prosperity and their net worth. It has never happened. The time it may have happened is during the Great Depression, but don't, we don't have enough good statistics to tell.

It has never happened on record before. It happened during Barack Obama. So the point is he was great for the connected, for the credentialed elites. He was terrible for the masses of working Americans. And that that focus, I might even say obsession has continued in his post presidency, where instead of coming back to Chicago, instead of moving to what he called home again and helping the people of Chicago.

He has been incredibly successful at becoming a Hollywood big tech star, and he is. He is welcome of course in Silicon Valley. He is welcome [00:05:00] in Martha's Vineyard, where he built one of the most lavish homes on the entire east coast of the United States. Spends a lot of time on jets and with the glitterati.

Very, very comfortable. Clearly in that crowd has cashed in massively with deals with Netflix worth. Reportedly north of $80 million, we don't know exactly, but in the well into the tens of millions, hundreds of millions in total in terms of book deals, movie deals, produ production deals has become generationally wealthy.

So I think his post presidency. Probably to most people has more obviously revealed who he really is and who it is that he really represents. And that's a, that connected cabal of crony elites who have for their own self-aggrandizement created policies that work really well for them, but punished the masses who Barack Obama claimed to represent.

Brian Hyde: Steve. Let's talk about another place where Barack Obama took our culture back rather than forward, and that is in, in terms of race relations. What are your thoughts on that? 

Steve Cortes: Yep. And here again, I like to use as much as possible statistics. And when you're talking about race relations, sometimes that can be a hard thing to quantify.

However, [00:06:00] I think polling is the best place to look there and in very reputable polling. And, and I, I have citations for all of this, which I'll be putting forth in my documentary by very good polling Americans. When he was elected, we're getting to a pretty good place of racial agreement of racial harmony.

We weren't there yet. We hadn't reached the MLK prescribed society where we were colorblind, but we'd made enormous progress in this country. It was it, it was difficult to find racist people. Certainly difficult to find anybody to be openly racist and among young people in damn near impossible coming into the Obama presidency.

But instead of, of of. Taking that incredible achievement, and I will give Obama his due on this. Okay. Capturing the, the White House as the first black American in a country that at one point regarded black men as property. That's an incredible achievement for him. An incredible achievement for the country, right?

Of how far we had come in terms of our race relations. But instead of taking that and really building on that and sort of. Finalizing what was already a really positive trend toward racial harmony. He went in exactly the opposite direction and at [00:07:00] every single opportunity, he massively exacerbated and exploited any kind of racial tension, whether it was real or whether it was concocted by him and his allies.

And so because of that, we, it flipped almost exactly, we went from 70% of Americans saying that race relations were getting better when he enters office to almost 70% saying getting worse when he left office. So eight years with a black president in office. The, the net worth of Black Americans takes an absolute tumble.

The net worth of the vast majority of Americans goes backwards. Race relations worsen dramatically with this black man in the White House, which of course makes the question, well, why? And again, I think it's because at every opportunity I. For his own selfish political gain and in some cases post presidency for his financial gain.

He chose to gin up what racial tension did exist or or to accelerate it and exaggerate it, and in many cases, literally just concoct racial grievances that didn't exist. A great example would be the Harvard Professor Gates, who was questioned by police and it seems. [00:08:00] Somewhat mistreated. Perhaps he blamed it on being black.

Although it's hard to think that the PD of Cambridge, Massachusetts, one of the most liberal enclaves in all of America, it's hard to believe that there's a bunch of virulent racist, like some southern sheriff in the 1950s. But regardless, instead of saying, Hey, maybe there was a misunderstanding here, let's talk about this and maybe everybody can learn a lesson if there was something that you know happened here.

Instead, Obama turned it into a a, a wedge. A wedge to drive between cops. And, and all Americans, but particularly black Americans, and especially black male Americans. And, and he did that time and again, I mean, he did in the Trayvon Martin case, he did it in Ferguson, which is really the birth of BBL m the, let's remember that by the way, people forget that BBL m, although the Bbl M riots are 2020 when most Americans really learned about what a terrible toxic organization BBL m is, that that organization found its birth during Barack Obama and mostly in opposition at first to Barack Obama.

But once he saw that some of the black leftists were angry at him. What did he do? He ran over to their side to try to placate them. So no, to me, the worst legacy by far, by far of [00:09:00] Barack Obama and where he failed the most morally politically, and in every sense, is a man who could have been a historic racial healer, who literally could have done, gone down in history books, probably right next to Martin Luther King, in terms of being an agent of, of peaceful coexistence.

And Comey and Harmony in our society instead became the exact opposite, and I firmly believe that eventually he'll be known for nothing more than just a quick footnote, first black president. It's a big deal. But that's it. Because what did he then do with that mantle? Not only did he not take our country to a higher place, not only did he not.

He actually took us dramatically backward, and I think Americans are starting to wake up to this, Brian, and part of why I'm on this issue right now, you, by the way, Cortez, why are you picking on Obama here in 2025? And I'll tell you the reason is there, there's two things. One macro and one more micro. The macro reason is I.

During this last election, November of 2024, I believe, and I'm deeply, deeply involved in the election on behalf of Donald Trump as I had been in 2016 and 2020, as you mentioned, officially on his campaign this time, working with outside [00:10:00] groups. I really believe that Barack Obama, for the first time became a net negative for the Democratic party and a net negative for Kamala Harris.

And that was fascinating to me as a campaign operative, as a as strategist, as a pollster, to see that, wait a second, Obama has not only. Now is he not an assistant? Now he is not propelling Kamala higher. He's actually dragging her down, particularly with black males. And I think for good reason because he was lecturing them as if he was a father talking to a toddler about they better vote, they owe their vote just because of her skin color.

They owe her vote to Kamala Harris and there was a rejection in and a revolt. And so I think something's building here. Somebody who has been regarded almost as a saint in American popular culture since this election in 2008. We're starting to see some dents in that armor right now. I think we saw it last November.

So that was the first reason I wanna talk about it. The second reason is more because of my Chicago roots and my chi, my love of Chicago. There's being built right now, the Obama Presidential Center, Obama Library on the south side of Chicago. I think it is a hideous monstrosity. I realize that. Beauties in the eye of the beholder, but I think [00:11:00] most people would agree with me.

Most Chicagoans I talked to didn't agree with me that it's unbelievably out of place. It's massive, it's gargantuan, it's almost offensive. It also costs, even if you don't agree with me on the, on the beauty part, it costs three times more than was originally planned. It was supposed to be $300 million.

It's now almost a billion dollars. May end up being over a billion dollars five years late by the time it's done. So I believe that this hideous. Incredibly expensive structure, which really serves to do nothing other than honor. Barack Obama does nothing for the South side community. Uh, I really believe that that's emblematic and and symptomatic of who he really is.

And this might be the moment where they jump the shark to huge pop culture analogy. It might be the moment where Obama and his allies have gone just a bit too. I hope it will be. And so given what happened last November, given this under construction library that they claim will be opening by next year, I thought it was a smart idea to try to expose with facts, not just Cortez's opinions with facts.

Who is the real Barack Obama and [00:12:00] why does it matter to you? That's the other thing, not. Not just to unmask him because we wanna do it just for the sake of it. I think that's worthy to have a proper history and proper understanding of who your leaders are. But much more importantly, even than that task is I, I want people to recognize that, that the current racial strife that we are experiencing in this country largely flows from the actions of Barack Obama.

And if we. Can expose who he really is. It might ease some of those tensions and it might get people to a much more reasonable and agreeable place. Regarding race, I wanna get back to where we were before Obama, regarding race on a really positive trend where Americans don't see race first. And we, where we are not balkanized and siloed into categories that are totally based on immutable characteristics about ourselves that we can't control, right?

The fact that I have brown hair or the fact that I'm, the height I am should be pretty immaterial as to how people judge me and as to what kind of opportunities I have in society. I think people can generally agree with that. If I were to just stick to height and hair color, well the same should be true.

[00:13:00] Of color and I a skin color. And I think we were really getting there until Obama. So I don't know that we can get back to that place of the positive trend unless we understand why we got off of that track, 

Brian Hyde: Steve, to, to the end of helping this be better understood, helping people understand what Barack Obama has contributed as well as taken away from our society.

You have been working on a new documentary. Tell me about, uh, that documentary and when does it come out? 

Steve Cortes: Yes. So this documentary will be released in mid-July, and it, it is called, you Don't Know, Barack, because we think most people don't know who Barack Obama is. They're starting to learn. But we wanna, we wanna give that trend a nudge and we wanna accelerate that process where people do really figure out and take a, a real look at him and again, and why he still matters.

Why he didn't just matter as president, why he matters as ex-president, why he matters for our society right now. And what I did is went to Chicago to my hometown. And talk to locals there. Regular folks, not not big, important names that you might know. Regular, hardworking, really [00:14:00] interesting, smart, persuasive people.

And most of 'em black by the way, people who voted for Barack Obama and some of whom lived on the south side near his neighborhood, others on the west side and tough neighborhoods, and, and came to their own realizations way, way beyond. Before I talked to them, Brian, before I interviewed them, it came to their own realizations that they had voted incorrectly.

That Barack Obama did nothing for them, didn't care about them as president, as a matter of fact, worked against their interests in most ways and has totally ignored them in the post presidency. And that part particularly seems to gall the folks I talked to in Chicago. The fact that he has almost never seen in the city of Chicago other than this monstrosity of a, of a library that's being built at such enormous expense is, is hardly a presence in the city at all.

And Chicago is in a lot of metrics, unfortunately. Probably the most troubled city in America has been the murder capital of America in terms of the most murders total for many, many years. Unfortunately, for decades has more murders, significantly more murders, for example, than the city of New York. Even though New York has three times the size, the population of [00:15:00] Chicago.

Chicago also has the highest life expectancy gap of any city in America, meaning in Streeterville, which is a very wealthy high rise neighborhood near the lake. You folks have visited Michigan Avenue in Chicago. You might know the high end shopping district that's. Adjacent to Streeterville Streeterville, and this is from NYU School of Medicine.

In Streeterville, average life expectancy is 90 years old, which is outstanding well beyond the national average, about six miles south of there in Englewood, very near where Barack had his community activism days. Average life exp expectancy is 60. It's a 30 year gap. In American city. That's the widest gap of any location, any city in America, any close geographic location in the entirety of the United States.

And some of that, by the way, is tied to the violence epidemic. Not entirely. There's a lot of other reasons people die too early in Chicago, in the poor neighborhoods. But my point is Chicago has a whole lot going wrong, and Chicagoans, whatever their color, whatever their political persuasion, I think naturally hoped when their own son was elected, their own resident.

Was elected to the presidency. That help might be on the way in for Chicago. [00:16:00] And in fact, the opposite happened. Chicago has done nothing but get worse since then. And in terms of Barack been completely ignored. Just neglect since he left office. He's very happy to spend his time in Beverly Hills and Martha's Vineyard and the Kalama neighborhood in Washington DC where by the way, I believe, and I don't think this is some loon conspiracy theory, I think he was largely directing policy during the Biden term, and we now know factually.

Just how incapable and cognitively impaired Joe Biden was during his presidency. So we know he wasn't making the calls, which of course raises the question, well, who was? And there's a lot of theories that make sense, but I think at least in part, it was probably Barack Obama who installed a heck of a lot of his key people and, and physically stayed in Washington DC which no president had done since Woodrow Wilson.

There's a long tradition. Okay, you're done. Go home, go do good things for the country. Go be Jimmy Carter, who I don't think was a great president, but I think an outstanding post president. Go build homes for people. Go be a Sunday school teacher in Plains, Georgia. That's, that's an admirable post presidential modeling [00:17:00] for America.

That is not what Barack Obama has done. Quite the opposite. 

Brian Hyde: Again, we're talking with Steve Cortez. He is a documentarian, as well as wears a number of other hats, and this is part one of a two part interview that we're doing with Steve. Steve, I'm gonna address a couple of the things you brought up here in the last little bit in the second part of our interview.

For those who want to follow your work though, is there a website where we can direct them to, to stay on top of what you're, what you're doing? 

Steve Cortes: Yes, and thank you so much, Brian. So go to Cortez in investigates.com. Cortez with an S at the end, cortez investigates.com. I also have a really active Twitter slash x for people who are on there.

I'm at Cortez, Steve on Twitter. But again, if you're not into. Into social media or X, just go to cortez investigators.com. All my documentaries, all my articles, all my polling, my content can be found there. Thank you, Brian. I, I appreciate you mentioning that. 

Brian Hyde: And again, we invite you to join us for part two of our interview with Steve Cortes.

This is the Prairie State Wire [00:18:00] Podcast.