Trump Needled Obama

Vincent J. Curtis

16 Sept 2016

Just a short one today.  (or maybe not!)  A couple of examples of how Trump needles Obama.  The first is the “birther” argument, and the second is Trump’s praise of Russian president Vladimir V. Putin (I put the ‘V.’ so that it looks New York Times-ish)

Since the Democrat National Convention, the Dems have been urging the thesis that the Russians are trying to help Donald Trump get elected by hacking and leaking Democrat emails.  At first, the Russian angle was as a means of distracting attention from the content of those emails, which was devastating.  The release of DNC emails just before the Democrat convention forced Debbie Wasserman-Schultz to resign as head of the DNC.  The content of those emails show the depth to which the DNC sunk in order to ensure the Hillary prevailed over Bernie Sanders.

Since then, any adverse hacking of Democrat associated emails is put upon Russian hackers to reinforce the narrative that Trump is being helped by Vlad Putin – and that can’t be good.  We get it on high authority that hackers use Russian methods to gain entry into Democrat emails, even though there is no proof offered of actual Russian-government origin.  The hack of Colin Powell’s emails is the first in which Russians actually took credit for the material.

In all of this, no one is expected to put two and two together and wonder if these aren’t strong indications that Hillary’s secret, unsecured email server was also hacked by the Russians.  We can’t know for sure because husband Bill had his servers that held Hillary’s email archive wiped and bleach-bitted before they were turned over to the FBI, but not before they were subpoenaed by the Congress.

Anyhow, Democrats are distracting attention from the content of hacked emails and from the possibility that Hillary’s were hacked years ago by shouting, “Russia!”

Everybody knows that Barack Obama and Vlad Putin don’t get along.  They despise each other, to be more accurate.  Barack Obama’s condescending talk about know what the “right side of history” is, and how cool he is and Vlad Putin is not, is contemptible to Putin.  On the other side, Putin makes Obama look weak.  The weapons that Obama uses successfully to beat down Republicans at every turn look weak and unavailing when used on Vlad.  The narrative has arisen on the right side of the political commentariat spectrum that Obama is weak and looks weak compared to the Russian strongman.  Vlad is a strong leader, and Obama is weak and vacillating – what with crossed redlines and Obama’s frank confessions of weakness about it.

Hence, whenever Trump talks favorably about Vlad, about his strong leadership and so forth, Trump is slapping Obama across the face with an invisible wet fish.  Trump is playing to the narrative that Obama is a weak and vacillating leader and lacking the Russian’s strength.  To a cool metrosexual, that’s are hard thing to combat.  If the metro gets all Neanderthal-like to prove his manhood, he looks ridiculous and phoney.  If he plays the woman card, it demonstrates that Trump’s allegations are true.  So all the metro can do is suffer in silence and look for devious ways of getting revenge.  Like saying Trump is unfit to be president for some reason or other – and being liked by tough foreign adversaries is one such reason.  (Never mind that a good personal relationship may lead to a relaxation of tension!)

Another thing that Trump did to Obama was that he forced Obama to release his long-form birth certificate and finally resolve the simmering issue that bothered a lot of the electorate, those members of the basket of deplorables that suspected that Obama was not a native-born American and was actually born in Kenya.  Obama toyed with the basketeers for years over the issue because he could play the race card and gain sympathy from his base, and make himself look superior.  Trump forced Obama’s hand, and Obama ridiculed Trump mercilessly ever afterwards about it.

The birther issue was raised again this week by the Obama-media.  Trump was pressed with questions of whether he still thought Obama was not born in America.  The media wanted to make Trump look ridiculous.

Trump played the media like a violin.  He said nothing until the media had worked itself into a full-throated chorus, “Are you still a birther or not, Trump?”

Trump arranged for a press conference at his new Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C. today.  He said he had a major announcement to make.  He even teased the media last night about it, having his campaign – but not himself – saying, “Having successfully obtained President Obama’s birth certificate when others could not, Mr. Trump believes that President Obama was born in the United States.”

The media were salivating at the prospect of pillorying Trump and making it look like he had backed down.  With continuous live coverage on cable-TV Trump put forward no fewer than 44 more General and military heroes who endorsed Trump for president, bring the number up to 164.

At the very end of the campaign event, Trump finally addressed the topic the media was there to hear. “Hillary Clinton and her campaign of 2008 started the birther controversy. I finished it.  President Barack Obama was born in the United States,Period. Now we all want to get back to making America strong again.”  Boom!  End of press conference......

Reporters were standing on chairs shouting questions at Trump over the applause of the audience, and he turned his back to them.  Trump succeeded in making the Obama-media look ridiculous.  He turned the tables on them, and he used them for his own purposes, both political and business and got free media time to boot.

The media knew they had been had, and were angry about it.  Since they are already venomous towards Trump, there is little more they can do to hurt him.  Even their complaining about being had makes Trump look like the smarter one.

Somewhere in the deep recesses of the Oval Office a slender man is on the floor chewing the carpet in rage.

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