Trump’s amusing, but sad Obama obsession
“I’ve got you under my skin. I have got you deep in the heart of me. So deep in my heart, you’re really a part of me. And I’ve got you under my skin.”
Cole Porter, 1936
I’m starting to wonder about our president.
He has a thing for our last president.
It’s not healthy.
President Trump is obsessed with President Obama.
Many people believe he’s had his Obama-fixation since that 2011 White House Correspondents’ dinner, days after Obama released his long form birth certificate.
Obama made Trump the butt of most of his jokes.
At the time, Trump, The King of the Birthers, smirked from his table at the event, while Obama zeroed in on him.
The room loved it. Trump didn’t.
Barack Obama had gotten under his skin.
For someone with such razor thin-skin, well, you know the rest.
Trump hadn’t been content just questioning Obama’s birthplace.
Just five days before that dinner, he implied Obama wasn’t smart enough to be president.
“I heard he was a terrible student, terrible. How does a bad student go to Columbia and then Harvard?” he asked during an interview with Associated Press on April 25th.
That night, though, Obama proved he’s at least as smart as Trump, and with a smile on his face.
Within weeks, Trump began launching Twitter attacks on Obama.
(While he had a Twitter account as early as November of 2010, his first negative tweet about Obama was on July 6th, 2011)
According to a web site called trumptwitterarchive.com, Trump has tweeted using the words “Obama” or “Obamacare,” a whopping 2,581 times.
We get it.
Trump doesn’t like Obama.
I don’t like liver, but I’d never tweet about it twenty-five hundred times. (That’s the first time I ever mentioned my disinclination to eat liver in public, by the way)
If you take a cursory look at that Trump-tweet repository, you’ll discover he’s not only allowed Obama to “get under his skin,” he’s awash in hypocrisy.
“Why is @BarackObama constantly issuing executive orders that are major power grabs of authority?” he tweeted in 2012.
He’s issued twice as many executive orders than Obama did during the same period of his presidency.
On September 6th, 2014, he tweeted, “President Obama has just reached an ALL-TIME low approval rating! Is anybody surprised?”
At the time, Obama’s job approval was 40% in the Gallup Daily poll.
Trump would be pleased if his job approval could rise above 40% today. His languishes in the mid-30’s.
In January of 2012, Trump tried to make light of the number of days Obama spent outside of the White House.
“President @BarackObama’s vacation is costing taxpayers millions of dollars—Unbelievable!” he wrote.
There are lots of people keeping a close watch on Trump’s frequent days off the job today.
“Donald Trump Has Taken off Three Times as Much Holiday as Barack Obama,” says a headline in the British publication, The Independent.
Since Trump has taken office, he’s done everything he can to try to erase the memory of Barack Obama.
He’s falsely boasted that his inauguration was larger than his Obama’s.
He’s made no secret that he’s trying to gut many of Obama’s key initiatives: DACA; the Trans Pacific Partnership; the Paris Climate Accord; normalization of relations with Cuba; the Clean Power Plan; the Iran Nuclear deal; the Keystone XL and Dakota Access Pipelines have all been placed under Trump’s erasure.
And since Obamacare is considered Obama’s signature legislation, Trump not only wants it repealed and replaced, he’s taken steps to kill it.
There are times when Trump simply can’t resist comparing himself to Obama.
He can’t help it.
Ask him any question about anything, and he’ll work Obama into the answer.
“You’re really a part of me. And I’ve got you under my skin,” Cole Porter wrote in that classic song sung by Ella Fitzgerald back in 1946.
Little did we know that a guy born that year, would grow up to become President of the United States – with another man under his skin.
Edward A. Owens is a multi-Emmy Award winner, former reporter and anchor for Entertainment Tonight and 20-year TV news veteran. E-mail him at freedoms@bellatlantic.net.