Racism, revenge drive Trump on Obama

If you believe someone has done you an injustice and you want to get even, for some this brings on excessive behavior illustrated by attempts to tear down the accomplishments of your adversary, along with personal attacks. If you add in the fact that your target is an African-American, and you are a Caucasian racist, this increases your desire for revenge.

A perfect example of the above are the relentless attacks by President Trump on anything and everything President Obama accomplished during his two terms as president. At the White House Correspondents’ Dinner in 2016, Obama joked about Trump’s chances of becoming a president and these comments stuck in [Trump’s] craw and won’t go away. With his enormous ego, his thin skin and his racist views, he could not tolerate Obama’s put down.

Ever since Trump was elected president, he is doing his best to smear President Obama’s legacy, hoping to stamp it out as if he never was president. For example, attacking Obama’s actions to deal with climate change, becoming buddies with President Putin, undoing legislation that was enacted to ensure clean air and water, and also advocating the repeal of laws passed to protect investors from unethical stock brokers. In addition, Trump has issued numerous executive orders attacking anything he can find with Obama’s name on it.

A partial list of his personal attacks on Obama include the following:

(1) From the very beginning, Trump was a leader in the so-called “birther movement,” alleging Obama was not born in the United States and therefore not qualified to be the president, all of this despite a birth certificate evidencing that he was born in Hawaii.

(2) Alleging that Obama would go down in history as the worst president of the United States. You would be hard pressed to find many who would support this comment, other than Trump’s core supporters who continue to see Trump as Jesus-like.

(3) Criticized Obama for taking time off to play golf during his presidency and the cost to the taxpayers for the trips, saying that he would be a president who took no vacations, but then he takes numerous trips to his Mar-a-Lago resort and other vacation spots, at a much greater cost to the country.

(4) Saying that during Obama’s presidency the State Department was in disarray, apparently forgetting what his looks like.

From the very beginning of his campaign, Trump has zeroed in on repealing the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) and has refused to even consider amendments to said act (which would probably have been enacted by now) because he couldn’t stand the act still being connected to Obama’s name.

Trump reminds me of Capt. Ahab in the novel “Moby Dick,” where Ahab’s obsession to kill a white whale blinded him of existing dangers resulting in the destruction of his ship and the death of himself and all but one of his crew.

BASS TRUMBO

Fayetteville