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The former president of the United States, Barack Obama, is settling accounts with his successor, Donald Trump: in a book he accuses him of having put the safety of his family at risk by lying about his place of birth. In addition, Obama accuses the Republican Party of having become an accomplice of Donald Trump and his lies.
In the first volume of his memoirs, titled “A Promised Land,” the first black president of the United States describes how Trump has been spreading the conspiracy theory since 2011 that Obama was not born in the United States and therefore not he has the right to be president of the United States. . SPIEGEL will publish excerpts from the book, which will be published in its next edition on Tuesday. “At first I ignored this nonsense,” Obama writes. But he quickly found out how Trump’s lie not only spread in the media, but also found an echo in the Republican Party. Who believed in the lie was “Birther” (from the English “birth” = birth).
Obama says there was an “emotional, almost instinctive reaction” to his presidency that “had nothing to do with political or ideological contradictions.” “It was as if my presence in the White House had awakened deep-seated fear, as if my opponents believed that the natural order of things was dissolving.” Donald Trump also understood this: “He promised millions of Americans who were scared by a black man in the White House an elixir to address their ethnic fears.”
Trump’s Hotline to Republicans
For Obama, the problem lies not only with Trump, but also with the Republican Party: the mood of the final phase of the electoral campaign between former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin and the Tea Party has “increasingly overwhelmed from the edge of the Republican Party to its core. ” Obama draws a direct line from Trump to Republicans: “It was clear that Trump did not care about the consequences of spreading conspiracy theories that he almost certainly knew were wrong, as long as he achieved his goals,” writes Obama.
In this sense, Trump hardly differed from the two leaders of the Republican parliamentary group, John Boehner and Mitch McConnell: the truth of what the two said was completely indifferent to them when they attacked Obama. “Trump’s political style was only different from theirs in that Trump was completely uninhibited. He instinctively understood what moved the conservative electorate and presented it in a pure form.”
Obama also reports on his wife Michelle’s concerns. “She had given me to understand that Trump and ‘birtherism’ worried her not about my political future, but about the safety of our family,” Obama writes. “‘People think it’s all just a game,’ he said. ‘They don’t think about the fact that there are thousands of gunmen who believe every word they are told.’
The rise of Donald Trump should continue to shape America despite his loss to Democrat Joe Biden. Leading Republicans support Trump’s attempts to legally challenge the election result, although to date there is no evidence to back up his fraud allegations. A renewed candidacy of the president-elect in four years does not seem to be ruled out. Until then, however, the former Obama MP will determine the fate of the country: in January, the newly elected President Biden will be sworn in as head of state and can return to the White House.
