Much of Donald Trump’s political career has been defined by weird conspiracy theories about Barack Obama. The Republican, for example, championed a racist conspiracy theory about Obama’s birthplace, and while in office, Trump accused the Democrat of, among other things, “wiretapping” Trump Tower in New York.
These claims were, of course, utterly bonkers, and common sense suggests the former GOP president should’ve learned from these experiences. But as NBC News reported, Trump apparently can’t quite help himself — and the result is a new addition to his list of Obama-related conspiracy theories.
Former President Donald Trump has been insinuating for weeks that former President Barack Obama is secretly still in control of the White House. On Monday in New Hampshire, he explicitly said it. “It’s never been worse than it is now under crooked Joe Biden and, frankly, his boss, Barack Hussein Obama,” Trump told a crowd of hundreds at a campaign stop. “I think it’s his boss.”
For those who keep an eye on the Republican’s rhetoric, Monday’s comments were familiar. Trump has, with increasing frequency of late, characterized Obama as Biden’s “boss,” secretly pulling the incumbent president’s strings from the shadows.
But circling back to our earlier coverage, Trump isn’t the only one peddling the claim. Megyn Kelly, a prominent conservative media personality, told an on-air audience last month, “There are a lot of people who think the Obamas are already running the government and that there is some sort of shadow puppet situation going on that they’re controlling.”
Kelly didn’t elaborate as to who the “people” are who believe such nonsense, but the group apparently includes former House Speaker Newt Gingrich: Two weeks earlier, the Georgia Republican appeared on Fox News and said he has a “hunch” that Obama is secretly “making decisions in the White House.”
In July, Republican Rep. Greg Murphy of North Carolina said during a Fox Business interview that he also believes that Biden is merely “a puppet for a progressive left committee, as it were, headed by Obama.”
Last year, Fox Business’ Maria Bartiromo also suggested that the former Democratic president might be secretly “running the country,” to which Republican Sen. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee replied that Obama’s meetings with Biden led people to believe that the former president was “the de facto leader in the White House.”
In other words, Trump’s conspiracy theory is bizarre, but it’s not uncommon.
When I last covered this conspiracy theory, I heard from a conservative reader who not only believed the idea that Obama was secretly in charge, he presented what he considered evidence: a list of prominent Obama appointees who now hold key positions in the Biden White House. Except, that’s not actually proof of anything. It stands to reason that the incumbent president would want White House staffers to have some executive-branch experience, and the only other Democratic administration in the 21st century was Obama’s. What’s more, Biden worked closely with many of these same officials — because he was Obama’s vice president. What’s even stranger is why, exactly, so many Republicans are invested in this particular conspiracy theory. The idea appears to be rooted in the idea that Biden is old, so he must need someone else to lead the White House in secret. But isn’t this counterproductive for the right? Once it becomes obvious that Obama, several years removed from government service, isn’t secretly in charge, aren’t we left with the obvious fact that Biden is perfectly capable, despite his age? This post updates our related earlier coverage.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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