Long before he descended that revolting gold escalator, Donald Trump found his political footing on a lie, a deeply racist one. The “birther” conspiracy, which falsely claimed that President Barack Obama was not born in the United States, was not just a fringe delusion.
Trump mainstreamed it. He nurtured it. And he wielded it cynically to stoke white grievance and vault himself into the political spotlight. That lie was the foundation for his eventual run in 2016. And now, nearly a decade later, Trump has doubled down with something even more dangerous. He’s accusing Obama of treason.
It’s blasphemy, multiplied by a hundred.
The birther conspiracy was not just a harmless political jab. It was designed to delegitimize the nation’s first Black president in the eyes of white America. It was sinister. It was racist — that bears repeating. And it worked. Trump’s relentless questioning of Obama’s citizenship signaled to millions that he was willing to say what others wouldn’t.
It endeared him to the most toxic elements of the right, and launched him straight into the 2016 Republican primaries. And when Obama roasted him at the 2011 White House Correspondents Dinner, a sorry-faced Trump presumably vowed revenge, starting with the 2016 election, reasoning why not show them all..
Trump is such a petty man, as Obama soars above him, and that pisses the petty man off.
That election, as confirmed by both U.S. intelligence and bipartisan Senate findings, was hijacked by foreign interference. Russia did interfere in the 2016 election to help Donald Trump. That isn’t partisan spin. It’s the official conclusion of the Senate Intelligence Committee, then cochaired by Republican Sen. Marco Rubio, who now of course is the Trump’s bootlicking secretary of State.
It’s backed by the Mueller report, by unanimous findings from Trump’s own intelligence chiefs, and even by Tulsi Gabbard, now Trump’s own director of national intelligence, who acknowledged the interference on Joe Rogan’s podcast in 2018.
And yet, Gabbard has now orchestrated a grotesque reversal to serve her boss. Her new “investigative” report, shamefully labeling the assertions of Russian interference a “seditious conspiracy,” attempts to pin the blame for said interference not on Trump’s campaign (where it belongs) but on President Obama.
It’s a stomach-turning betrayal of truth and patriotism, and it reveals how far Trump’s inner circle is willing to go to feed his obsession with retribution. Obama essentially made Trump look like a liar with the “birther” controversy, and Trump wants revenge.
The truth is Barack Obama had zero influence on the bipartisan Senate report, zero influence on the Mueller investigation, and zero participation in any fabricated “conspiracy.” His administration warned about Russian interference. Trump’s people welcomed it. And now, in a grotesque act of projection, they’re blaming Obama for their own disgrace.
That’s really it. Trump knows Obama can disgrace him, so Trump attempts to disgrace Obama, and in turn becomes a disgrace.
And Trump, never one to let go of a lie, took it a step further. In an unhinged rant, he accused Obama of treason and suggested he should be prosecuted. This is no longer politics based on being embarrassed by Obama more than once. It’s a fascist fantasy. Trump, the man who pardoned actual seditionists from the January 6 insurrection, is now smearing the most admired president in modern American history.
This isn’t just wrong. It’s dangerous.
Let’s not underestimate the consequences. Trump’s MAGA base, riled up once before by the birther lie, now has new marching orders. They’ve already shown they’re willing to take violent action based on Trump’s words. And now he’s accusing Obama, without evidence, of the highest crime in the nation. This is a red line. Someone could get hurt. Someone could get killed.
Make no mistake: When Donald Trump calls Barack Obama “treasonous,” he’s lighting the same match he used to ignite the birther lie. This is a calculated attempt to inflame his white supremacist base with the ugliest weapon in his arsenal, and that is racist hate dressed up as patriotism.
Even President Obama, usually restrained in his public comments, felt compelled to respond. In a statement, he denounced the accusations as “completely baseless” and “profoundly irresponsible.” And they are. But Obama’s response won’t reach MAGA America. They’ll believe Trump. They always do. Truth doesn’t matter in a movement built on lies.
In fact, they despise Obama and everything he stands for, which includes honesty and decency, something severely lacking in political discourse at the moment.
And the timing is no coincidence. Trump is on a scorched-earth retribution tour. From threatening to prosecute journalists to installing loyalists like Gabbard to rewrite history, Trump’s authoritarian turn is no longer hypothetical. It’s here. And it’s getting worse.
His enablers, Rubio, Gabbard, and others, know the truth. They read the same reports. They know Russia interfered. They know Obama didn’t conspire. But they are willing to lie, to defame, and to endanger lives to keep Trump’s ego intact. It’s shameful. It’s disqualifying. And in any functioning democracy, it would be criminal.
Trump built his movement on a lie. But this new lie, this grotesque, reckless accusation of treason, is a threat to the republic itself. It poisons the well of democratic discourse. It incites hatred. And it opens the door to political violence on a scale we’ve never seen before.
It’s hard to grasp the severity of this, but we can’t look away, and we most certainly can’t normalize it. And we can’t wait until someone is harmed to say, “We should have known.”
However, I have a genuine concern and fear that that is what’s going to happen.
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