President Obama regularly accepted personal responsibility for his actions. He understood that he was responsible for what happened on his watch and he owned it. Donald Trump is not that man.
Donald Trump is an excuse-maker, and he took to Fox & Friends this morning, as part of a lengthy and wide-ranging interview, to attack President Obama, blaming the former president for anti-Trump and town hall protests:
“I think President Obama’s behind it, because his people are certainly behind it.â€
“I think President Obama’s behind it, because his people are certainly behind it.†–@POTUS on some of the protests around the country pic.twitter.com/YC3SEAYFts
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— FOX & friends (@foxandfriends) February 28, 2017
Brian Kilmeade inviting Trump’s accusations by claiming that,
“It turns out his [Obama’s] organization seems to be doing a lot of the organizing of some of these protests that a lot of Republicans are seeing around the country and against you.”
It doesn’t matter that Republicans (and Democrats) who are upset with their so-called representatives can prove who they are; in the Fox News reality bubble, which now envelops the White House as well, any protests against anything Republicans do must by definition be bought and paid for by George Soros – or now, Barack Obama.
After all, nobody could possibly disagree with anything Republicans say, and Kilmeade’s question was asked in the context of his invented reality:
Brian Kilmeade: “Do you believe President Obama is behind it, and if he is, is that a violation of the so-called unsaid president’s code?”
Donald Trump: “No, I think he is behind it, but I also think it’s politics. That’s the way it is.”
Kilmeade: “But Bush wasn’t going after Clinton, Clinton wasn’t going after Bush.”
Trump: “Well, you never know what’s exactly happening behind the scenes. You’re probably right or possibly right but you never know. No, I think President Obama’s behind it because his people are certainly behind it, and some of the leaks possibly come from that group.”
Here again, Trump is reaching. President Obama has, other than criticism of the Muslim ban, been very circumspect in addressing Trump’s performance, very much in keeping with George W. Bush’s own silence when dealing with Obama’s early days in office. In fact, many Democrats have been begging him to become more engaged.
Only a month into it, Trump’s term by any measure is not a normal administration. But opposition to Trump’s Muslim ban does not mean Obama is organizing anti-Trump or anti-GOP protests. He doesn’t have to. Donald Trump has organized those through his own actions.
What Fox & Friends and Trump have done is to insist something is true without any evidence, and because they insist it is true, Obama must be to blame.
Thanks, Obama.
It’s a ridiculous charge by any measure, and Trump leaks have already become the stuff of legend – or at least satire: Sean Spicer’s own team is leaking (even leaks about leaking) and it can’t possibly be that any in Spicer’s team are Obama holdovers. Nor can anyone in Trump’s team be an Obama holdover, yet Trump’s team is also leaking like a sieve.
When asked, Trump told Kilmeade that he isn’t “disappointed” in Obama (again, for something he hasn’t done in the first place) because, he says, “I understand the way the world works. That’s politics.”
It is, after all, what he would be doing in Obama’s place. With somebody else’s money, of course.
It’s certainly politics to lie, and here Fox News and Donald Trump have concocted a whopper of a straw man, in this case inventing an act President Obama did not commit and there is no evidence of him committing beyond their beliefs that he is guilty, and then criticizing him for it.
Hrafnkell Haraldsson, a social liberal with leanings toward centrist politics has degrees in history and philosophy. His interests include, besides history and philosophy, human rights issues, freedom of choice, religion, and the precarious dichotomy of freedom of speech and intolerance. He brings a slightly different perspective to his writing, being that he is neither a follower of an Abrahamic faith nor an atheist but a polytheist, a modern-day Heathen who follows the customs and traditions of his Norse ancestors. He maintains his own blog, A Heathen’s Day, which deals with Heathen and Pagan matters, and Mos Maiorum Foundation www.mosmaiorum.org, dedicated to ethnic religion. He has also contributed to NewsJunkiePost, GodsOwnParty and Pagan+Politics.
