Pete Souza - Shade: A Tale of Two Presidents

The Obama White House

petesouza

An extremely cr edible sour ce has called my of ce and told me that @BarackObama s birth certicate is a fraud.

Donald J. T rump @r ealDonaldT rump

August 6, 2012 3:23 PM

petesouza Live TV in the Scandal Room at the Wa tergate Hotel.

Why I Throw Shade

Inauguration Day 2017 was an emotional day . I had spent eight years visually documenting President Barack Obama s time in ofce as his Chief Of cial White House Photographer , and I was exhausted. I looked forward to a br eak fro m my demanding schedule but knew Id miss interacting with him and my White House family . W e had all gr own close and would suddenly be separated that day at noon.

What made the day surreal was the person Pr esident Obama was handing the keys over to. It wasnt his former Secr etary of State Hillary Clinton, as we all had thought. It was a carnival barker who had ascended to the presidency by sheer bravado, bullshit, and outright lies. We now know the Russians had af fected the election also and changed the course of history . Whether his campaign was directly involved is still being investigated as I write this in the summer of 2018. Regardless, I was convinced that the incoming president was not at all up to the task.

Following the inauguration, as our helicopter lifted off fr om the U.S. Capitol, one of my White House family members asked me how I was doing.

Im depressed, I said. I watched this guypointing to Pr esident Obama, seated across fr om meevery week in the Situation Room, asking thoughtful questions, listening to advice, making tough but well-informed decisions on really important issues. But this other guy , I said, glancing out the window to where the new pr esident had watched us depart, is not capable of that.

I had seen what the presidency r equire dnot just in the Obama administration but years before, when I was an of cial photographer for Pr esident Reagan. And both Presidents Reagan and Obama took the job seriously and r espected the ofce of the pr esidency . That didnt appear to be true for the new guy .

At the time, I hoped he would surround himself with competent people, learn on the job, and not lead us down a dangerous path. Unfortunately , he s become much worse than any of us feared. The White House now emanates a constant barrage of lies and hateful comments. The president acts like he does not respect democracy or the rule of law . His presidency has become a r eality game show , driven by his primal need to achieve the best ratings and wins for himself. He does not respect women, minorities, or immigrants; he often doesn t appear to r espect even his wife. T o him, a critical news story is F AKE NEWS. T o him, all our intelligence agencies ar e corrupt. He shuns pr eparation for meetings with foreign heads of state. He tells his supporters how he alone can x the economy , yet his policies will hurt them and help line his pockets, as well as those of rich people like him. And then there s his ongoing attempt to cripple millions of Americans by taking away their health insurance.

Early in the rst week of his presidency , I posted on my new personal Instagram account an innocuous photograph of President Obama by the Resolute Desk. Underneath, I wrote a snarky caption, saying I liked the old drapes better than the gaudy new ones that had recently been installed.

Ye s, I was pissed off that the new pr esident had been elected. I was also appalled by the curtains themselves: the redecorated Oval Of ce, with its emphasis on gold, made the White House look like his personal palace. In fact, it is the people s house.

The overwhelming positive reaction to my post caught me by surpriseand one comment left me bewildered: Pete is dr opping shade with a comment on drapes.

What is shade? I wondered.

During the next few days, I posted more photographs of Pr esident Obama, using subtle captions that contrasted with something the new president had done.

Dozens of reporters asked to interview me. I turned them down. They did their stories anyway . A few wr ote that I was thr owing shade at the new pr esident.

So, nally , I googled thr owing shade and Merriam-W ebster explained it to me: it s a subtle, sneering expr ession of contempt for or disgust with someone sometimes verbal, and sometimes not.

Y up, that s what I was doingthr owing shade. And I kept it up for the rst 500 days of the new administration, and I plan to keep going long after youve read this book. My comments are often humor ous, and Id even say they ar e more or less respectful. They ar e certainly mor e resp ectful than the tweets coming from this pr esident.

I also try to make subtle comments with my Instagram posts without directly revealing what the curr ent pre sident has said or done. Many people tell me they see my posts and then try to nd out what they missed in the news.

In this book, I take a turn to full transpare ncy and let it all hang out. In the pages that follow , you will see adaptations of my original posts matched up dir ectly with what inspired thema pr esidential tweet and/or the news that caught my attention in the rst place. Y ou can call it shade. I just call it the truth.

I hope you laugh, and maybe even cry , as you read this book. During the past 18 months, outrage has bubbled up inside me. I have become more and mor e appalled at the person that we, with help from Russia, elected to r eprese nt our nation. Wi th this book, Im standing up and shouting out. I can t be subtle any longer .

THE TRUMP WHITE HOUSE

Y ou saw thatpacked. I get up this mor ning, I tur n on one of the networks and they show an empty eld. I said wait a minute, I made a speech. I looked out the eld was, it looked like a million, a million and a half people, they showed a eld where ther e was practically nobody standing there.