Obama’s tirade against Trump lacks punch
The earlier administration did not call attention to hacking and is now baselessly alleging collusion between the US president’s campaign and Russia
ather than let nature take its own course and gently glide into revered ex-president status, former United States president Barack Obama has launched a twofront war on President Donald Trump. And frankly, it could help Republican leadership in Congress just when it needs it.
By becoming such a pointed and vocal critic of the GOP health-care bill, Obama is forcing Republicans to choose whether they will vote against the bill — and save Obamacare — or evolve with Trump and fix a broken system that has only got worse with time. Trump’s “America First” policies threaten Obama’s legacy. Trump has already rolled back several burdensome regulations from the Obama years, but what worries Obama most is Trump’s commitment to repeal and replace America’s national disaster that is Obamacare.
At this point, the worst thing that could happen for Trump and congressional Republicans would be for Obama to sit silently on the sideline. Obama may think he’s helping his cause, but forcing Republicans to choose between him and Trump is misguided.
Oh, and by the way, let’s not forget that Obama’s recent foray into the health-care conversation comes at a time when House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (Democrat, from California) is struggling to survive after going 0-4 in the special elections for seats vacated by Republicans since November. She has discredited herself and the entire Democratic Party. A lot of Democrats understand the extent of her failure, hence their gravitation to every word that comes out of Obama’s mouth. They are desperate for leadership, but have no one in office to look to.
And as if gratuitously weighing in on health care was not enough, Obama wants to retell the story of his management of Russia’s meddling into the 2016 election. He is working with the mainstream media to concoct a narrative so wildly inconsistent with the facts that only the most gullible Obama apologist would believe his latest version of the truth.
Comedy of complacency
For one, Democrats would have you believe that Obama did all he could to sound the alarm and call attention to Russian hacking during the election. But that is far from the case. As I wrote in December, the administration failed to take effective action for two reasons. It did not think Trump was going to win and it was incompetent. As the New York Times reported, the Obama Justice Department — via the FBI — first tried to warn the Democratic National Committee of hacks on its systems in September 2015. The result was a comedy of complacency, neglect and stupidity that let the problem linger on until October 2016 — over a full year later — when the administration confirmed the hacks. Obama says he acted decisively, but telling Russian President Vladimir Putin to “cut it out” was about as useful as his “red line” in Syria.
And for good measure, the liberal mainstream media seems to be pushing the idea that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (Republican, from Kentucky) is somehow to blame for allowing the Russian hacking to go on unaddressed. Citing anonymous “officials”, the media went so far as to suggest McConnell “voiced doubts about the veracity of the intelligence”. But the narrative does not end there. As if to insinuate McConnell’s remarks had some sort of effect in swaying the administration’s handling of the hacking, reports claim he “voic[ed] scepticism that the underlying intelligence truly supported the White House’s claims”. Really? Since when did the Obama administration ever listen to McConnell?
Anyway, Obama and Co. did not think Trump had a chance. They did not properly call attention to the hacking and they are only now baselessly alleging some sort of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. And if Obama had any credible evidence of such activity, he would have been the first person to make sure the news leaked. But that did not happen. Obama had no hint of collusion then, and he surely has no proof of it now. If Obama wants to be truly helpful and honest, he would confirm that immediately. The Democrats are desperate and the Obama-Pelosi tag team is thrashing around the ring, unable to land any blows. They have no momentum, no ideas and no leadership. Trump and the entire GOP could not be any luckier to have such a weak opponent fighting to take them down.
Ed Rogers is a contributor to the PostPartisan blog, a political consultant and a veteran of the Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush White Houses and several national campaigns.
www.gulfnews.com/opinions