There is a reason Obama is more respected than Trump
It is rich to see Trump diehards come out to condemn President Barack Obama for having the audacity to use a commencement address to criticize the abominable response to the coronavirus, daring to challenge the president who has maligned and savaged him not only throughout the entirety of his presidency, but for years before it.
Have the president’s loyalists forgotten the racist birther hoax that Trump knew from the start was bogus, or was that something they see as benign, “boys will be boys”, all is fair in politics?
In an effort to distract attention from a nation in a state of economic collapse similar in respects to the Great Depression, a nation more divided than ever, a place in which even a health care calamity is politicized, we are now told by Trump of “Obamagate”, an alleged crime spree which he cannot specify when questioned about it, responding to a reporter when asked what the crime is, “You know what the crime is. It is very obvious to everybody.” Trump says that he would like Mr. Obama to be investigated, something which even the president’s puppet, South Carolina U. S. Senator and Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham, has thrown cold water on.
Mr. Trump’s pronouncements on the coronavirus crisis today are likely to bear no relationship to what he said yesterday or what he will say tomorrow as he tries to have it all ways. Day after day, week after week: throughout February and March and into April, he played down the seriousness of the threat. When that became impossible to do, he declared the nation at war with it. Flying in the face of what health care scientists have said, including those on his coronavirus task force, he now pledges that a vaccine will be available by the end of 2020, but also has proclaimed victory over it, hedging his bets, “Vaccine or no vaccine, we’re back”.
For those who accuse President Obama of a lack of class, dignity and protocol for daring to publicly take on Trump, have you listened to the things the president you support, admire, and consistently defend has said over the years, the ugly name-calling, the profanity, the disemboweling of anyone who would dare to disagree with him, including hurling accusations of treason and suggestions that those who are disloyal should be executed, that his 2016 challenger for the presidency, Hillary Clinton, could be dealt with by “The Second Amendment people”?
There is plenty of hypocrisy in politics. It would be hard to imagine a greater demonstration of it than what we see in those who are horrified by the target of relentless attack striking back, and doing so, I would note, without the ugliness and rancor which has been directed at him, declining to lower himself to Trump’s level. There is a reason that former President Obama is more respected and popular than the president who deserves no respect as he declines to respect others.
Oren Spiegler
Peters Township