Recently people on the right have started pushing a ludicrous pseudo-scandal they’re calling Obamagate. It holds that investigations by Barack Obama’s administration into Russia’s attack on the 2016 U.S. presidential election were a form of illicit sabotage of Donald Trump and his team. The story doesn’t really make sense, which is why, when asked about Obamagate, President Trump couldn’t describe it. But at the heart of the conspiracy theory is “unmasking,” the routine practice by which national security officials find out the names of Americans who appear on intelligence intercepts of foreign actors. Trumpists have tried to turn this into a sinister and portentous term.
Obamagate exists to rewrite the history of Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference to make Trump the victim, rather than someone who actively sought Russia’s help and then took steps to reward the nation’s president, Vladimir Putin, for providing it. Trump often accuses others of misdeeds that he is guilty of; recall his sputtering response to Hillary Clinton calling him a Putin puppet in a 2016 debate: “No puppet! No puppet! You’re the puppet!” In Obamagate, he is accusing his opponents of politicizing intelligence because of a political vendetta, which is what his administration is currently doing.
Obamagate is Trump's attempt to rewrite his history -- and an attempt to deflect the facts that are spilling out:
Last week [Rick] Bright, the former head of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, a federal agency responsible for vaccine development, filed a whistle-blower complaint. He claimed that his attempts earlier this year to get the government to take the new coronavirus seriously were rebuffed, and that he was removed from his job after resisting pressure to fund “potentially dangerous drugs promoted by those with political connections and by the administration itself.”
On Thursday, as Trump was on Twitter asking Senator Lindsey Graham to drag Obama before Congress, Bright testified before a House subcommittee. His message was devastating. He described months of government lassitude early in the coronavirus outbreak, and an administration that has yet to even formulate — never mind execute — a plan for containing the pandemic.
Bright spoke of how dozens of federal scientists working on the coronavirus were distracted by an order to put all other work aside to focus on chloroquine, a drug typically used to treat malaria that Trump was then obsessed with. (Early studies into using chloroquine for Covid-19 patients have been disappointing.) He said that doctors and nurses are using substandard masks because the government was forced to procure them from countries without adequate quality control standards. “Some of those masks are only 30 percent effective,” he said. “Therefore, nurses are rushing in the hospitals thinking they’re protected, and they’re not.”
That evidence should be devastating. It's part of a broad pattern -- a pattern Trump has labelled "fake news:"
Since Trump took office, he has, like many authoritarians, built an alternative reality that deranges public discourse and encases his followers in a carapace of lies. As the evidence of his savage incompetence becomes harder to deny, the efforts to shore up that alternative reality will only become more desperate. The real scandal of a looted government leaving citizens prey to death and destitution will fuel ever more histrionic fake ones. It remains to be seen whether howls about Obamagate can distract from the desolation Bright warned of in January, and is warning of still.
All of this information should bring Trump down. Unfortunately, as the country "reopens," thousands of Americans are rushing into places -- shoulder to shoulder -- shouting "live free or die." That admonition has always been a false choice. But falsehood is the hallmark of the Trump administration.
Image: Rebel Nation
4 comments:
From coast to coast, Americans will be marking the Memorial Day weekend and the re-opening of most states by shedding Covid virus like never before. They hit 80,000 deaths on Monday and, at the end of a single work week they're closing in on 89,000.
And Trump is telling his fellow citizens that the virus kills "only a tiny percentage of people." When will Americans understand that their president is a mental basket case, Mound?
this may be about the orange maggot wanting to distract and change the story, but in my opinion what this is really about is trying to have Obama arrested and put in trial. he is just getting warmed up. This isnt' going away and you can bet there will be "evidence' produced in the not so distant future by the willy barr and the trail will start. You do remember "lock her up", that still hasn't gone away.
trump and is racist sports team owners can not abide the fact that an African American was elected president not once but twice. he wants to ensure a message is sent so it doesn't happen again. The Pacific Gazetteer has an interesting post up.
This is going to get a lot uglier as time goes by
You could be right, e.a.f. This could get very ugly.
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