Trump's obsession with Obama is an attempt to distract from his failures
After two months of quarantine, we all start to dream about breaking free from our perfect little prison. Amid the endless days and nights of impending doom, whose thoughts have not turned to the place that gives us the most hope?
How can you not yearn to swap the relentless grind of this Groundhog Day for the sun-filled uplands of your own happy place?
Your dream destination might be a Caribbean beach or simply a local bar. But for Donald Trump, his Shangri-La is that corner of the 2016 election when he was just an honest grifter screaming conspiracy theories at Hillary Clinton.
His love boat has one port of call, far away from a pandemic and recession: a place they call Obamagate.
What is this wonderland where our impeached president can finally kick back? It is a place where the corrupt are cleansed, and the cops are all crooked; where tainted elections are purified by the sheep dip of Fox News; where former presidents are mentioned far more than pandemics.
But what, exactly, did the last president do, beyond wearing a tan suit, that could possibly earn him the dreaded suffix applied to every scandal from Donutgate to Pastagate to multiple-Piegates?
“It’s been going on for a long time,” our presidential Gandalf told reporters on Monday. “It’s been going on from before I even got elected. And it’s a disgrace that it happened. And if you look at what’s gone on, and if you look at, now, all of this information that’s being released – and from what I understand, that’s only the beginning – some terrible things happened, and it should never be allowed to happen in our country again.”
Yes, but, what exactly is Obamagate? Apart from the most terribly terrible thing that disgracefully disgraced this country a long, long time ago, in ways that should never, ever, happen to anyone. Oh no.
“You’ll be seeing what’s going on over the next – over the coming weeks,” he continued, like the all-seeing, allknowing troll he truly is. “But I – and I wish you’d write honestly about it, but unfortunately, you choose not to do so.”
This cruel, cruel world is so unjust. Why can’t people choose to write honestly about all this dishonesty?
But honestly, what exactly is this mysteriously epic crime that is about to engulf the ex-president we shall now call Barack Obamagate?
“You know what the crime is,” Trump said, slapping down yet another pesky reporter. “The crime is very obvious to everybody. All you have to do is read the newspapers. Except yours.”
Read any one of the newspapers, except that one. And the other one. Yeah, that’s right. Not that one either. You should skip over this rag, too.
There’s always the Epoch Times (motto: “Truth and Tradition”) of course. But frankly you need to go to a really trusted news source like One America News, Trump’s new best friend in news, since Fox News turned weird by asking questions about all its geriatric viewers dying from the coronavirus.
“Watching @FoxNews on weekend afternoons is a total waste of time,” tweeted our commander-in-chief in the middle of the pandemic. “We now have some great alternatives, like @OANN.”
Thank goodness he can watch the TV at weekends without totally wasting everyone’s time. Because only One America – not the other America of truth and the rule of law – had the courage to ask about a possible justice department investigation into all those Obama officials who were mysteriously present at the start of the Russia investigation.
Kayleigh McEnany, the new White House press secretary, is nobody’s fool. She couldn’t possibly comment on a justice department matter like that. But as it happens, she had plenty to say about the transcripts the justice department is reviewing, which is totally different.
“This president was exonerated by the Mueller reports,” McEnany declared, “and there are some real questions for these individuals who are saying one thing publicly and another thing privately.”
Damn right, Kayleigh. Why didn’t these Obama people know everything that Robert Mueller uncovered after almost two years of investigation? They admitted they didn’t have the evidence Mueller did. It’s so obviously fishy.
It’s like saying it’s safe to open up the country in the middle of a pandemic but insisting on daily tests for White House staff behind closed doors. It’s like telling everyone else to wear a mask while refusing to wear one yourself. You can’t say one thing publicly and another thing privately.
Now there are some people who fear this kind of game is going to lead to something desperate, like indicting a former president or his senior aides. After all, a justice department that just dropped the case against Michael Flynn – who pleaded guilty in open court – has no core belief in justice.
But that’s not the point of this malarkey. This is Hunter Bidengate and Clinton emailgate. This is smeargate and distractgate. You should probably showergate after reading this.
Trump has many good reasons to sail away to the land of smears. They’re called the polls, and they are – for the sociopath sitting in the White House – even worse reading than the pandemic death tolls or the latest unemployment claims. Trump is losing to Joe Biden by three points in Florida in the most recent Fox News poll, where he was supposed to have a lock on his re-election from his Mar-a-Lago mothership.
That’s on top of polls showing Michigan and Pennsylvania moving decisively against him, and Senate race polls turning close states like Colorado and North Carolina into Democratic blowouts.
In his hour of need, Trump wants us to forget about the lack of testing, tracing, vaccines and treatment. He wants us to proclaim Mission Accomplished and move on. He wants us to say things are bad, but they could be worse.
If only something were worse than 80,000 dead Americans and almost 30 million unemployed. But nothing comes close to all those lost weeks and months when Trump ignored the pandemic, failed to prepare for the worst, and pretended like it was no big deal.
Not an imaginary scandal that cannot be described, about a defunct investigation that pulled its punches. Not the desperately kooky Ukraine corruption that led to his very real impeachment. Nothing compares to Trumpgate.