Tea at Trianon: Frank Marshall Davis, Barack Obama’s Communist Mentor

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Friday, November 21, 2025

Frank Marshall Davis, Barack Obama’s Communist Mentor

From Mark Judge at Hot Air:

Frank Marshall Davis was a journalist and a member of the Communist Party. Davis was born in Kansas in 1905. Interested in journalism from a young age, he moved to Chicago in 1927 to write for the black press. Davis joined the Communist Party in Chicago in the early 1940s. CPUSA members at the time swore an oath to “ensure the triumph of Soviet power in the United States,” and Davis soon had a 600-page FBI file. In 1946, he became the founding editor-in-chief of The Chicago Star, a Party-line newspaper. Davis shared the op-ed page with the likes of Howard Fast, a “Stalin Prize” winner, and Sen. Claude “Red” Pepper, who sponsored a bill to nationalize healthcare in the United States.
Davis left the Star in 1948 for Hawaii, where he would write for the Party-line organ there, The Honolulu Record. Kengor: “His politics remained so radical that the FBI had him under continued surveillance. The federal government actually placed Davis on the Security Index, meaning that in the event of a war between the United States and USSR, Barack Obama’s mentor could be placed under immediate arrest.”
Davis and Obama met in 1970. They were introduced by Obama’s maternal grandfather, Stanley Dunham. Obama’s father had abandoned the family, and Dunham thought Davis would be a good influence on young Obama. In his 1995 memoir, Dreams from My Father, Obama notes that Davis dispensed wisdom on topics such as race, women, and jazz. “I was intrigued by old Frank,” writes Obama, “with his books and whiskey breath and the hint of hard-earned knowledge behind the hooded eyes.”
In Dreams from My Father, Obama repeatedly talks about Davis. However, as Kengor notes, in the 2005 audio version of Dreams, “Frank” is totally missing—he’s been airbrushed out of Obama’s story. Also, in Dreams, Obama never uses Marshall's full name, only referring to him as ”Old Frank." (Read more.)

Deal Hudson interviews Mark Judge about the ordeal of the Kavanaugh hearings, HERE.