Obama lives inside Trump’s head rent free

The measure of a person is not how they behave when the going is good – it’s when the going gets tough, and how they respond, that really shows you the character of the person in question. Which is explains an awful lot about Donald Trump and his fixation with Barack Obama.

Trump’s presidency has been nothing but a succession of failure, now culminating with his administration’s abysmal response to the Coronavirus pandemic. So, what does our stable-genius Commander-in-Chief do, among other things, as he is increasingly shown to be clueless in the fight against this awful virus? Slam Obama.

Refuse to unveil his portrait in the White House. Spew out some Chan 8, Breitbart, InfoWars drivel about Obamagate” – whatever that’s meant to mean.

To say that Obama lives inside Trump’s head rent free is light years beyond stating the obvious.

That’s because Obama is everything that Trump is not – classy, erudite, articulate, considerate and cosmopolitan. A true global citizen, Obama was still a proud American, firm in his belief that the American dream was attainable and open to all. That the US was, and always should be, a force for good. Allies could rely on the steadfast resolve of the US in solidarity, cooperation, business and strategy.

And then we have Donald J. Trump. A failed human being, let alone businessman, now squatting in the in Oval office. Bigoted, ill-read, inarticulate and a general oaf in all that he does, Trump is a classless dolt, embarrassing both himself and the country every single day. America’s allies now find themselves bewildered as the American led post-War order has dissolved at the hands of a narcissistic, thin-skinned, sociopath.

Anyone with the slightest knowledge of the economy knows that Trump rode Obama’s coat-tails when it came to inheriting a robust economy. Obama had truly saved the American and global economies following the (Republican induced) financial crash of 2008. For Trump to claim credit for his predecessor’s work is, well, so very Trump.

Trump simply has no concept of culpability. Never wrong, he is the drunken bore at the end of the bar, pontificating about a range of subjects he really knows nothing about while all the time claiming abstract credit.

Barack Obama was a ground-breaking president. Did he get it right all of the time? No. And nor would he want anyone to think that. Did he try and get it right all of the time? Undoubtedly. Quite how we could go from that to the dismal specter of a failed man-baby, who can only express himself through a mixture of Twitter tantrums, meaningless thumbs-up gestures and incoherent ramblings about pretty much anything and everything, will keep historians and political scientists guessing for centuries to come.

And yet, Obama still maintains his class, despite this latest round of Obamagate conspiracy nonsense. Even when taking Trump out for his tepid Coronavirus response (with leaders “not even pretending to be in charge”), Obama has not once mentioned Trump by name. In stark contrast,

Trump still can’t stop invoking his predecessor’s name at the slightest of opportunities. That may well resonate with his MAGA faithful and the legions of right-wing racist and conspiracy theorists out there, but for the sizeable majority of Americans, it does nothing more than bring back memories of when the country actually had a president and was actually governed in a presidential fashion.

You would think that for a property-developer such as Trump, he would be especially in tune with the fact that he has Obama living in his head rent free. But then Trump was as atrocious a landlord as he is a president.

We can expect more of this as we edge closer to the November presidential election. Trump is as predictable as the sun rising in the east and setting in the west – which is absolute. Get ready to hear more about Obamagate, how Biden was intimately linked to that and how Trump’s predecessor is somehow inspiring millions of fraudulent votes come November.

We know Trump is a casual racist and conspiracy-peddling demagogue. That he has an African- American constantly living in his head rent-free has to be torment for him – and some sense of blessed relief for the rest of us as we try to return to politics based on civility and not hate.