It is easy to overlook some of the everyday corruptions that President Trump has inflicted on the body politic. After all, his unique blend of logorrhea, mendacity, and clownishness creates an atmosphere that lends itself to dismissing his daily absurdities. But when we just shake our heads and say that's just Trump being Trump, we are buying into the false framing preferred by the president and his defenders: that he is a successful leader with great acumen for political gamesmanship and yet also at the very same time an amateur who does not understand the impact of his own words, and should not be taken seriously.Miller writes that Trump's new obsession with #Obamagate is a perfect example. He has a hard-won experience with MAGAland.
Last [October] I went deep into the heart of the MAGA web to understand the web of conspiracies that President Trump has since dubbed #Obamagate.From "Being Donald Trump: Inside the World Where Conspiracies Are Reality":
Go ahead and read that piece—a rollicking 3,000 words of crazy that I highly recommend you ingest with a stiff cocktail.
I dove deep into the MAGA web, suffered through several slurry interviews with Rudy, and even watched a couple Hannity segments in order to put together what I believe to be the definitive version of events according to Trump and his most obsequious allies.Miller is certain that no Republican Senator could describe with any specificity the contours of this alleged scandal. Indeed, Trump's theory is so stupid that he "can't answer the most basic question about it". He thinks simply tweeting "#OBAMAGATE!" every day is enough of an explanation. (And for many of his fans, it probably is.)
But before you read further, I implore you to reject your implicit biases, have a glass of peaty scotch, and open your mind. ... [P]repare to be redpilled by a story so shocking it may scar your soul until the end of days. ...
Their theory is . . . complicated. It took several days for me to unpack it and even still there are a few remaining holes that need filling. So for anyone having trouble grasping its full majesty, I'll take each claim separately, so you can see how the structure of this belief was assembled piece by piece and what is left to be uncovered.
Here is Miller's tl;dr of the "crime" that Trump is accusing Obama of, "even if he doesn't realize it":
Four years ago, there was a global conspiracy—comprised of President Obama, Vice President Biden, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, FBI Director Jim Comey, much of the FBI, the DNC, a company called CrowdStrike, multiple foreign intelligence services, and Ukrainian oligarchs—to undermine Donald Trump by planting a phony conspiracy theory that he was colluding with the Russians to win the 2016 election. These deep state operators framed several top Trump officials, fabricated evidence, and spied on the campaign with the end goal of committing the biggest fraud in American history in order to derail Trump.Miller notes that after his 2019 article ran, he heard from "a number of bona fide MAGA media consumers" and they admitted he "pretty much got their story right".
So, how nutty is this new nonsense Trump has pulled out of his ass to distract the country from 85,000 (and counting, quickly) dead Americans (because even six months after he was first warned about the coronavirus, he still has no plan)?
On Fox News last night, Judge Jeanine Pirro said the theory involved leaps "that even Evel Knievel couldn't land".
And:
"Obama-gate" is basically Al Capone trying to indict the IRS for tax evasion.— David Frum (@davidfrum) May 13, 2020
1 comment:
Of course, the people you're quoting are themselves a pack of neocon professional liars, whose lies and conspiracy theories produced disasters like the Iraq invasion that Trump hasn't matched. If you're going to criticize Trump, at least find some non-war criminals to use as sources.
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