[ad_1]
What did “Obamagate” start?
On Friday, former United States President Barack Obama expressed concern at the Justice Department about dropping charges against former Donald Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn, who was fired in early 2017 for lying about talks. with the Russian ambassador. In a recording obtained by Yahoo News, Obama warned that “the rule of law is at risk.” He also described Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic as “an absolute chaotic mess.”
So Trump took the moral ground and maintained a dignified silence?
Not quite. He spent Mother’s Day plunging into the swamps of fever on the right and unleashing a barrage of tweets and retweets attacking his predecessor. One simply said “OBAMAGAR!” (The suffix “door” is a move often used in the Watergate scandal that toppled President Richard Nixon.)
Another linked to a publication that stated: “Barack Hussain Obama is the first former president to speak against his successor, who had a long tradition of decorum and decency.” Trump added: “They caught him, OBAMAGATE!”
Got caught doing what, exactly?
Trump also retweeted Buck Sexton, a right-wing broadcaster who claimed that “the outgoing president used his last few weeks in office to attack incoming officials and sabotage the new administration.” Then the president added his own comment: “The biggest political crime in the history of the United States, by far!”
In other comments Thursday of last week, Trump claimed without evidence that Flynn had been targeted by the Obama administration in an attempt to defeat Trump himself. It moved around terms like “treason” and “human scum”.
Flynn, a retired general, pleaded guilty to making false statements in a charge filed by then-Special Adviser Robert Mueller. Now he insists that he did not lie and wants to withdraw from the appeal.
Trump and his supporters have seized recently released FBI documents from interviews with Flynn, claiming they show he was the victim of “dirty cops.” A handwritten note from the then FBI director of counterintelligence read: “What is our goal? Truth / Admission or make him lie so we can prosecute or fire him?
Can this really be subject to Obama?
A fact check by the Associated Press concluded: “It is true that the investigation into ties between Russia and the Trump campaign, and about Russia in particular, began during the Obama administration. But it continued until the Trump administration itself. The Flynn investigation was undertaken by a special attorney appointed by Rod Rosenstein, Trump’s own deputy attorney general.
“The internal FBI correspondence that emerged in the past two weeks also does not reveal to agents who say the objective of the investigation was to take down a president.”
So what exact crime is Trump accusing Obama of committing?
The president himself does not seem to know. “Obamagate,” reflected Monday in the Rose Garden of the White House. “It has been happening for a long time. It has been happening since before I was elected. And it is a disgrace that it has happened.”
When asked by a Washington Post journalist a second time about Obama’s exact crime, Trump replied cryptically: “You know what the crime is. Crime is very obvious to everyone. All you have to do is read the newspapers except the of yours.
Clear as mud, then.
Could this be a distraction from something?
Some critics believe Trump is desperately trying to divert attention from his confused and hesitant response to the pandemic, as the death toll in the United States exceeds 80,000 and the economy suffers from the worst job losses since the Great Depression. They could also be a way to undermine Obama’s Vice President Joe Biden, whom Trump will face in the November presidential election.
And they are indicative of a long obsession. Trump effectively began his political career by pushing the “primitive” conspiracy theory that Obama was not born in the United States and therefore should not be eligible for the presidency. It has dedicated great efforts to undoing the legacy of its predecessor, for example, by trying to kill the Affordable Care Act, by withdrawing from the nuclear deal with Iran and the Paris climate accords, and by cutting environmental and other regulations.
