.jpg%3Ftrim%3D0%2C50%2C0%2C50%26width%3D1200%26height%3D800%26crop%3D1200%3A800&w=3840&q=100)
Fox & Friends does just what Trump wants –pretending the Epstein fiasco doesn't exist
While the bulk of right-wing media is gripped in a state of chaos over Trump chastising his 'so-called 'friends'' for remaining obsessed over the Epstein files, which he suggested were fake and 'written by Obama,' Fox & Friends decided on Monday morning that the best course of action was just to ignore the raging firestorm completely.
Since before his first term in office, Fox News' flagship morning program has largely served as Trump's daily agenda-setter, as it is typically the first thing the cable news-obsessed president flips on to start his day. Whether it is peddling the administration's talking points unvarnished or amplifying culture war outrages to grab Trump's attention, Fox & Friends is the first and most important stop in the president's day-to-day MAGA media diet.
At the same time, whenever the conservative cable giant wants to send a message to the president about potentially changing course on a specific issue, the denizens of the curvy couch have stepped up in the past to warn Trump about potentially going down a specific path. That didn't appear to be the case on Monday, though, as Fox & Friends decided to heed his call to look the other way on Epstein.
What makes this decision by the morning show stand out somewhat more, too, is that the weekend version of Fox & Friends outright warned Trump on Sunday that he couldn't just sweep the Epstein story under the rug while lashing out at his own base for continuing to focus on it.
'If there's anybody who could walk in and say, 'OK, we've resolved all of the questions and there is nothing here,' it would be President Trump and his crew,' Fox & Friends Weekend co-host Charlie Hurt said. 'The problem is, you can't really do it without giving some explanation. And there has to be some explanation. And I think that's why you have a lot of people still pretty with a lot a very valid questions.'
Guest anchor Kevin Corke added that Trump could 'defuse this ticking time bomb if you simply get out there,' noting that 'you have to answer questions to the American people' because 'this story won't die and that is a distraction the president doesn't want.'
Elsewhere on Fox News over the weekend, some criticism came the president's way as the right-wing network was forced to deal with the backlash from its MAGA audience over the Justice Department's memo that concludes there was no 'client list,' Epstein committed suicide, and he didn't appear to blackmail prominent figures who engaged in his underage sex trafficking.
'The refusal to release anything from Jeffrey Epstein has really struck a nerve — a deep nerve — among many Trump supporters, many people in the MAGA movement who say they feel betrayed,' Fox News media host Howard Kurtz acknowledged on Sunday's broadcast of MediaBuzz.
One of Kurtz's guests, Washington Examiner editor Sarah Bedford, called it a 'huge PR disaster for the Trump administration' and that they could not 'have scripted a better way to keep the conspiracy theories alive than the way they handled it.'
While other Fox News stars, particularly Laura Ingraham at this past weekend's Turning Point USA conference, have sounded the alarm that much of the president's base could turn on him over his handling of the Epstein fallout, the network seemed to do its level best to shrug it off starting Sunday night.
Over on The Big Weekend Show, for instance, co-host Lisa Marie Boothe delivered a short report noting that 'President Trump is telling his attorney general to ignore the noise over the Epstein files and keep her eye on the ball arresting criminals and restoring integrity at the DOJ' before pivoting to the administration weighing criminal probes agsainst James Comey and John Brennan.
Notably, some within the MAGA media universe are already wondering if the Brennan and Comey investigation is just an effort to 'distract us' from the Epstein case, specifically pointing out that Fox News was the one that got the 'scoop' on the probe.
A little while later during his weekend evening show, Brian Kilmeade – who is also a co-host of Fox & Friends – flat-out ignored his guest Michael Shellenberger's observation that 'the elephant in the room' was the Epstein files and how Attorney General Pam Bondi and the FBI's leaders 'led everyone to expect that we would see them' and this could lead to an 'end of the honeymoon period for the Trump presidency.'
By Monday morning, the message delivered appeared to be crystal clear – do not talk about the deceased sex predator under any circumstances. And that's just what Kilmeade and the rest of the Fox & Friends crew decided to do.
While the cable news competition feasted on the story – MSNBC's Morning Joe, for instance, mentioned Epstein over 100 times and Bondi an additional 80 times on Monday – Fox & Friends found other things to fill out its three-hour block to distract its most crucial viewer.
'I'm sure he needed a nap right after,' Kilmeade joked during a segment about Joe Biden's recent interview with The New York Times in which the former president defended his use of an autopen, a Trump-made scandal that Fox News has heavily pushed.
Elsewhere throughout Monday morning's broadcast, the Fox & Friends hosts also discussed how Gen Z men are using 'boy math' to invest in Pokémon cards instead of traditional stocks and a New York Times column about the need to stop cutting off MAGA family members.
The attempt by Trump's morning buddies to put their heads in the sand and to pretend that MAGA isn't tearing itself apart over the Epstein memo – and now coming for the president himself over his lengthy relationship with the convicted sex offender– still won't make the issue go away, no matter how much Trump-pandering chum they try to throw into the water to distract viewers.
'Trump's persuasive power over his base, especially during his first term, was almost magical,' said alt-right conspiracist Mike Cernovich, one of the 15 conservative influencers whom Bondi handed the 'Phase 1' Epstein file binders in February of already-public information about the disgraced financier. That debacle blew up in Bondi's face and sparked a months-long backlash that culminated in last week's memo.
'The reaction on Epstein should thus be startling to him. No one is buying it. No one is dropping it,' Cernovich added.
MAGA podcaster Benny Johnson, who spoke at this past weekend's TPUSA event that featured attendees raging about Trump becoming the 'deep state' and 'protecting pedophiles,' declared on Monday that the long-fabled 'Epstein client list' is now the 'number one motivating issue for the base.'
'You don't have a political movement if you don't have a base,' he insisted. 'And if that base feels like you're betraying them or not telling them the truth, then they're not gonna like that.
With former Trump strategist Steve Bannon also warning that the president could lose 10 percent or more of his base over the Epstein memo and his administration's efforts to move past it, Bannon and other MAGA luminaries are pushing Trump to course-correct in an effort to tamp down the right-wing anger. Especially since conspiracy theories about Epstein – which Trump and much of his administration have long nurtured and fanned the flames of – have been a gravitating force of Trumpism for years now and an extension of the Pizzagate and QAnon pedophilia fever swamps.
Amid the infighting within the administration over the controversy – FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino has threatened to quit following a clash with Bondi over the way the memo was handled – Trump officials and aides are reportedly considering at least three ways to try to defuse the Epstein mess.
Still, even with these ideas being floated about, the administration is following the president's lead for the moment, which is no more talk about Epstein stuff. And that Bondi, Bongino and FBI Director Kash Patel are all doing a 'FANTASTIC JOB' and in 'good shape,' regardless of the obvious disarray taking place behind the scenes.
'The president said to put this behind us, so we're putting this behind us,' a top Trump adviser told Axios. 'If he changes, then the policy changes. Period.'
This edict would appear to hold true for his curvy couch pals as well.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Daily Mail
7 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
Anti-Trump protesters set to march in Scotland over US President's five-day visit to open golf course and talk trade deals with Keir Starmer
Donald Trump will land in Scotland later today as he begins a five-day private trip to the country with mass protests expected around his golf courses and major cities. The US President is due to arrive on Air Force One at Glasgow Prestwick Airport this evening before heading over to his Turnberry golf course in South Ayrshire. He is expected to spend time at the course over the weekend, meet Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer and Scottish First Minister John Swinney, open a new 18-hole golf course at his Menie estate in Aberdeenshire on Tuesday and then fly home. A huge security operation involving officers from across the UK is well underway - with protests planned in Aberdeen, Glasgow, Edinburgh and at the two courses. A 10ft-high metal barrier has been installed at Turnberry to help protect the President. Mr Trump's family have spoken of their pride and excitement over his visit - with Eric Trump, the executive vice-president of his father's Trump Organization, saying the President had waited 'years' to come back to the country of his late mother's birth. Eric Trump told the Scottish Daily Mail: 'We have just completed the greatest course on Earth and waited years for this day to come. I've never been more proud to have my father arrive in Scotland to see his original dream come to fruition. We can't wait!' The President will be welcomed at Prestwick later by Scottish Secretary Ian Murray, with the minister pledging to give the American leader a 'warm welcome'. But Mr Trump's presence has resulted in a significant operation from Police Scotland and thousands of officers, who are expected to deal with mass protests. The Stop Trump Coalition is planning demonstrations in Aberdeen and Edinburgh tomorrow and there is a major police operation in place amid concerns it will seriously stretch resources. Kirsty Haigh, from the Scotland Against Trump group, told Sky News: 'He should not be welcomed by us, by our leaders. We want to see a Scotland that is very different than [the] America that's being created.' How Donald Trump's mother Mary was a daughter of Scotland Mary Anne MacLeod Donald Trump's trip to Scotland this week will be a homecoming of sorts, but he's likely to get a mixed reception. The President has had a long and at times rocky relationship with the country where his mother grew up in a humble house on a windswept isle. Mr Trump's mother was born Mary Anne MacLeod in 1912 near the town of Stornoway on the Isle of Lewis, one of the Outer Hebrides off Scotland's northwest coast. 'My mother was born in Scotland - Stornoway, which is serious Scotland,' the President said in 2017. She was raised in a large Scots Gaelic-speaking family and left for New York in 1930, one of thousands of people from the islands to emigrate in the years after the First World War. Ms MacLeod married the President's father, Fred C Trump, the son of German immigrants, in New York in 1936. She died in August 2000 at the age of 88. Mr Trump still has relatives on Lewis, and visited in 2008, spending a few minutes in the plain grey house where his mother grew up. Mr Trump's last visit as a serving President in July 2018 saw thousands of people protest in Aberdeen, Edinburgh and Glasgow. The trip cost Police Scotland more than £3million and required mutual aid as officers were sent in from other UK forces. The latest visit is expected to require a security operation as big as the arrangements for the late Queen Elizabeth II's funeral in September 2022 - involving up to 6,000 officers - with taxpayers again facing a bill of more than £3million for policing his stay. Around 5,000 Police Scotland officers will be needed for the 'large-scale, complex' Operation Roll 2 – the codename for policing the visit - with a further 1,000 drafted in from the rest of the UK. A 'ring of steel' has been established at Turnberry, with 10ft perimeter fencing erected as security measures are ramped up by officers with road closures in place. Chinook helicopters were at Prestwick Airport earlier this week, while US military planes and helicopters gathered on Monday. A convoy of vehicles and staff were being flown in to keep him safe during his visit. Ordinarily his bullet-proof motorcade could include up to 50 vehicles, some carrying anti-aircraft guns and hi-tech radio equipment, while others are designated for family, close aides and members of the Press. Several black SUVs were unloaded from two US Air Force C-17 cargo planes at Prestwick on Wednesday, with another three of the aircraft arriving in the afternoon. The helicopters that operate as Marine One when the President is on board cost between $16,700 and nearly $20,000 per hour to operate, according to Pentagon data for fiscal year 2022. The modified Boeing 747s that serve as the iconic Air Force One cost about $200,000 per hour to fly. Military cargo aircraft also fly ahead of the President with his armoured limousines and other official vehicles. Stephanie Campbell and Leanne Maxwell, who live in Turnberry and used to work at Mr Trump's resort, said the first lesson staff there are given is how to respond to a bomb threat. Ms Campbell told Sky News: 'I had no issues working for him, he is a really decent boss. The last time he came there was an element of excitement, I think this time there comes with an added element of concern. 'It brings a lot higher threats and security and it's much more difficult for everybody in the area.' Ms Maxwell added: 'Security is obviously being bumped up. It's quite worrying. He's quite a man, ain't he?' The President will meet with Sir Keir during his stay when the pair will discuss the UK-US trade deal, and will also meet with First Minister John Swinney 'at some point'. The SNP leader previously said he would have the opportunity to raise various issues with Mr Trump, including tariffs, Gaza and Ukraine. Trump's ongoing Scots golf course battles Mr Trump's ties and troubles in Scotland are intertwined with golf, after he first proposed building a course on a stretch of the North Sea coast north of Aberdeen in 2006. The Trump International Scotland development was backed by the Scottish government, but it was fiercely opposed by some local residents and conservationists. They claimed the stretch of coastal sand dunes was home to some of the country's rarest wildlife, including skylarks, kittiwakes, badgers and otters. Local fisherman Michael Forbes hit the headlines after he refused the Trump Organization's offer of £350,000 to sell his family's rundown farm in the centre of the estate. Mr Forbes still lives on his property, which Mr Trump once called 'a slum and a pigsty.' 'If it weren't for my mother, would I have walked away from this site? I think probably I would have, yes,' Mr Trump said in 2008 amid the planning battle over the course. 'Possibly, had my mother not been born in Scotland, I probably wouldn't have started it.' The golf course was eventually approved and opened in 2012. Some of the grander aspects of the planned development, including 500 houses and a 450-room hotel, have not been realised, and the course has never made a profit. A second 18-hole course at the resort is scheduled to open this summer. It's named the MacLeod Course in honour of the President's mother. There has been less controversy about Mr Trump's other Scottish golf site, the long-established Turnberry resort, which he bought in 2014. He has pushed for the British Open to be held at the course for the first time since 2009. Turnberry is one of ten courses on the rotation to host the Open, but organisers say there are logistical issues about 'road, rail and accommodation infrastructure' that must be resolved before it can return. Speaking ahead of his arrival, Mr Swinney said the global attention the visit will receive provides Scotland with an opportunity to respectfully demonstrate the principles of freedom and justice for all, while also promoting Scotland's tourism sector and economic investment potential. He said: 'Scotland shares a strong friendship with the United States that goes back centuries. That partnership remains steadfast through economic, cultural and ancestral links - including of course, with the President himself. 'As we welcome the President of the United States, Scotland will be showcased on the world stage. This provides Scotland with a platform to make its voice heard on the issues that matter, including war and peace, justice and democracy. 'It also includes the millions of Americans - many of them potential future tourists or investors in Scotland - who will watch their elected President as he visits our country. 'As First Minister it is my responsibility to advance our interests, raise global and humanitarian issues of significant importance, including the unimaginable suffering we are witnessing in Gaza, and ensure Scotland's voice is heard at the highest levels of government across the world. 'That is exactly what I will do when I meet with President Trump during his time in Scotland.' Mr Swinney said Scotland is a 'proud democratic nation' that 'stands firm on the principles of equality and freedom for all, and a society that stands up for a fair and just world'. Ahead of the expected protests, he said people had a right to 'peaceful demonstration', adding that 'everyone has the democratic right to protect and express their views in a peaceful, and democratic manner'. 'That is right and proper,' he added. 'I am confident the vast majority of people protesting will do Scotland proud and demonstrate as they should - peacefully and lawfully. 'I am also confident that Scotland's police service can handle the challenge of keeping all our communities safe and, as they must, in maintaining the appropriate security any US President requires. 'This weekend is a landmark moment in our relationship with the United States, and I am certain it will be remembered for Scotland showing the world the very best of itself.' Former prime minister Liz Truss was spotted at Turnberry yesterday, but it is not known whether she will meet the President. Although Mr Trump is in the UK on a private visit, he will face calls from both sides of the border to cut his punishing tariffs on whisky and other exports. Whisky chiefs are desperate for the President to reduce or scrap the 10 per cent duty imposed on exports of malts and blends to the US. The Prime Minister is also expected to raise the issue during planned talks on Monday. Mark Kent, chief executive of the Scotch Whisky Association, said: 'The President's visit to Scotland is a timely opportunity to highlight the enduringly positive relationship that has lasted between Scotland and the United States for centuries. 'Scotch whisky and US whiskey embody that close and abiding relationship... and both have flourished under zero-tariff access to UK and US markets for over thirty years.' He added: 'The visit is a critical moment for the UK Government to re-engage in discussions to remove the tariffs on Scotch whisky in the industry's largest global market.' A history of America's golfers-in-chief Family financial interests aside, Donald Trump isn't the first sitting US president to golf in Scotland. That was Dwight D Eisenhower, who played in Turnberry in 1959. George W. Bush visited the famed course at Gleneagles in 2005 but didn't play. Many historians trace golf back to Scotland in the Middle Ages. Among the earliest known references to game was a Scottish Parliament resolution in 1457 that tried to ban it, along with football, because of fears both were distracting men from practising archery - then considered vital to national defence. The first US president to golf regularly was William Howard Taft, who served from 1909 to 1913 and ignored warnings from his predecessor, Teddy Roosevelt, that playing too much would make it seem like he wasn't working hard enough. Woodrow Wilson played nearly every day but Sundays, and even had the Secret Service paint his golf balls red so he could practice in the snow, according to Mike Trostel, director of the World Golf Hall of Fame. Warren G Harding trained his dog Laddie Boy to fetch golf balls while he practiced. Lyndon B. Johnson's swing was sometimes described as looking like a man trying to kill a rattlesnake. Bill Clinton, who liked to joke that he was the only president whose game improved while in office, restored a putting green on the White House's South Lawn. It was originally installed by Eisenhower, who was such an avid user that he left cleat marks in the wooden floors of the Oval Office by the door leading out to it. Mr Bush stopped golfing after the start of the Iraq war in 2003 because of the optics. Barack Obama had a golf simulator installed in the White House that Mr Trump upgraded during his first term, Mr Trostel said. John F Kennedy largely hid his love of the game as president, but he played on Harvard's golf team and nearly made a hole-in-one at California's renowned Cypress Point Golf Club just before the 1960 Democratic National Convention. 'I'd say, between President Trump and President John F Kennedy, those are two of the most skilled golfers we've had in the White House,' Mr Trostel said. Mr Trostel said Mr Trump has a handicap index - how many strokes above par a golfer is likely to score - of a very strong 2.5. However, he has not posted an official round with the US Golf Association since 2021. That's better than Joe Biden's handicap of 6.7, which also might be outdated, and Mr Obama, who once described his own handicap as an 'honest 13.' The White House described Mr Trump as a championship-level golfer but said he plays with no handicap. Mr Trump is also expected to hold talks with Mr Swinney, who previously called for his official state visit to be cancelled. The First Minister was urged to hold constructive talks and put an end to 'petty posturing' which could threaten jobs and investment. Scottish Conservative leader Russell Findlay said: 'The success of President Trump's visit to Scotland must not be jeopardised by John Swinney indulging in the SNP's usual petty posturing which we have seen so often.' Mr Swinney previously backed Mr Trump's rival in the Presidential contest, Kamala Harris – and voted in favour of a motion in 2019 calling for the withdrawal of an offer of a state visit to the UK during Mr Trump's first term. But yesterday he said the UK Government has a 'duty' to make sure it is 'welcoming foreign dignitaries to Scotland in the right way, particularly one that is our closest and nearest ally both economically and in defence and security'. He said it was 'in the national interest to work as closely as possible with the United States' and that it was right that he is welcomed when he arrives. Six years ago, Mr Murray backed a motion tabled by Labour's Stephen Doughty in the House of Commons which called on then Prime Minister Theresa May to rescind the offer of an official state visit to Mr Trump. The motion said the House 'deplored' Mr Trump's 'misogynism, racism and xenophobia', among other criticisms of his time in office. Asked what has changed, Mr Murray said: 'What's changed is that it is really important for both countries to work together. Governments have to work together very closely. 'Given the US is our closest ally, given we have just done a trade agreement with them to remove tariffs for the benefit of UK and Scottish businesses, and given global events at the moment, it is really, really important for these historic ties to work together with our closest allies, and that is what we are intending to do. 'The important thing is that what has changed is the basis of us being able to work together with our allies. Being in government gives us the responsibility to do that.' White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers called the Scotland swing a 'working trip'. But she added that Mr Trump 'has built the best and most beautiful world-class golf courses anywhere in the world, which is why they continue to be used for prestigious tournaments and by the most elite players in the sport'. The trip to Scotland puts physical distance between Mr Trump and the latest twists in the case of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, the wealthy financier accused of sex trafficking who died in prison in 2019 before facing trial. In his heyday, Mr Epstein was friends with Mr Trump and others in the New York jet-set, but the President is now facing backlash from his own MAGA supporters who demand access to the Epstein case files. The Wall Street Journal, which published an article detailing longstanding links between Mr Trump and the sex offender, is being punished by the White House. Its reporting staff plans to travel to Scotland on its own and join the White House press pool. But it has now been denied a seat on Air Force One for the flight back home. Mr Trump is expected to return to the UK in September for a state visit - his second - at the invitation of King Charles III.
ITV News
8 minutes ago
- ITV News
Politics and protests: What to expect from Donald Trump's Scotland visit
Donald Trump will arrive in Scotland later on Friday, on his first visit to the UK since his re-election. The US president will be met by both political leaders and protests during the visit, which is expected to last five days, and will see him inaugurate a new golf course in Aberdeenshire. The trip comes two months before the King is due to welcome Trump for a formal state visit to the UK. The Trump administration continues to deal with turmoil on the home front, as the president struggles to salvage his reputation with voters amid reports around his friendship with convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. But Trump's visit to his ancestral home will hardly provide an escape from controversy. The visit has faced criticism from both political opponents and local residents, and will see a significant police operation across Scotland. Why is Trump visiting Scotland? Trump is expected to visit his Turnberry golf resort, as well as his course at Menie in Aberdeenshire. His trip also comes as a new golf course is about to debut on August 13, which the Trump family business has billed "the greatest 36 holes in golf." Trump is dedicating the new course to his Scottish-born mother, Mary Anne MacLeod, who grew up on the Isle of Lewis. But Trump's existing Aberdeenshire course has been mired in controversy in recent years, after it struggled to turn a profit, and was found by Scottish conservation authorities to have partially destroyed nearby sand dunes. Trump's company was also ordered to cover the Scottish government's legal costs after the course unsuccessfully sued over the construction of a nearby wind farm, arguing in part that it damaged golfers' views. Critics also argue the trip - which is expected to cost tens of thousands of dollars - is a blatant example of Trump blending his presidential duties with promoting his family's business interests. The White House has brushed off questions about potential conflicts of interest, arguing that Trump's business success before he entered politics was key to his appeal with voters. White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers called his visit "a working trip", but added that Trump has "built the best and most beautiful world-class golf courses anywhere in the world, which is why they continue to be used for prestigious tournaments and by the most elite players in the sport." Who will Trump meet during his visit? The president will meet with Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer during his stay, when the pair are expected to discuss the UK-US trade deal. Trump said the meeting would likely take place at one of his properties. He will also meet with Scottish First Minister John Swinney. The SNP leader previously said he would take the opportunity to raise various issues with the president, including tariffs, Gaza, and Ukraine. Speaking ahead of his arrival, Swinney said the global attention the visit will receive provides the opportunity to promote Scotland's tourism sector and economic investment potential, as well as to allow people to respectfully demonstrate the principles of freedom and justice. "Scotland shares a strong friendship with the United States that goes back centuries," he said ahead of the visit. "The partnership remains steadfast through economic, cultural and ancestral links - including, of course, with the president himself." The first minister said Scotland is a "proud democratic nation" that "stands firm on the principles of equality and freedom for all, and a society that stands up for a fair and just world." Swinney has been vocally critical of the US president in the past, and openly endorsed Trump's political opponent Kamala Harris before last year's election - a move branded an "insult" by a spokesperson for Trump's Scottish businesses. John Swinney has argued that it is "in Scotland's interest" for him to meet the president, and for the visit to go ahead. But some Scots disagree, and a major police operation is being mounted during the visit in anticipation of protests. Thousands of officers are expected to be deployed by Police Scotland, who will deal with planned mass protests around Trump's golf courses and major Scottish cities. Trade unions, disability rights activists, climate justice campaigners, Palestinian and Ukrainian solidarity groups and American diaspora organisations are among those holding demonstrations in protest of the visit. The Stop Trump Scotland group has encouraged demonstrators to come to Aberdeen and 'show Trump exactly what we think of him in Scotland.' A spokesperson for the organisation said: "The people of Scotland don't want to roll out a welcome mat for Donald Trump, whose government is accelerating the spread of climate breakdown around the world." They also said that people in Scotland "simply wanted to live in peace near what is now [Trump's] vanity project golf course", and have "experienced Trump's abusive and high-handed behaviour first-hand, long before he entered the White House." Protests are planned in Aberdeen, Edinburgh, Glasgow and Dumfries. During Trump's visit to Scotland in 2018, similar gatherings drew thousands of protestors.
New Statesman
39 minutes ago
- New Statesman
The abomination of Obama's nation
Photo by Paul Morigi/WireImage So incoherent is Donald Trump's reign, so criminal, stupid and impulsive that, incredibly, it seems that even the vaguest possibility the president could be a paedophile is the only thing which can unify the nation. To distract from the rising water, Trump has resorted to a time-honoured American tactic: turning attention towards the trusty bogeyman of the black male. Earlier this week, his administration released thousands of irrelevant documents on Martin Luther King Jr, none of them salacious or damning in any way, or even historically significant. Just days before, Trump had reposted an AI video of Barack Obama being pushed to the floor and arrested in the Oval Office, and then pacing and sitting in a prison cell wearing an orange jumpsuit. This was apparently part of a strategy: the director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, alleges a 'treasonous conspiracy in 2016' in which Obama supposedly tried to sabotage Trump's election campaign, and that Obama's administration attempted a 'coup' by manufacturing intelligence showing Russian election interference. The man who loves to scream about 'fakes' and 'hoaxes' is now, not surprisingly, orchestrating phoney accusations into his own outlandish fraud. Trump has been waiting all the time he has been president to lunge at Obama. Even before landing in the White House, Trump falsely accused Obama for years of not being born in the US, and thus ineligible to be president, all the while sneeringly implying Obama's disloyalty to country by referring to him as Barack Hussein Obama. In some eerie way, Trump smells a fearful symmetry between him and his obsession. Obama remains the one political opponent Trump truly fears, an alpha political animal burning bright in the forests of the American night every bit as much as the self-anointed king from Queens. The gamble of Obama's original campaign was to make what could have been his greatest liability – his race – into a political asset. In a country anguished by war, and frightened by George W Bush's absent response to Hurricane Katrina, people were surprised to hear that the US's profoundest problem was not war or the moral efficacy of its leaders, but America's racial divisions. Americans listened to Obama thunder about the 'creed… whispered by slaves and abolitionists as they blazed a trail towards freedom through the darkest of nights: yes, we can'. Obama made sure to insert references to 'immigrants' and 'pioneers' in his stirring addresses to the nation, but the theme he constantly returned to was the country's primal wound of race and the urgent necessity of healing it. Having made race a national emergency, Obama, a black male, was positioning himself as the only figure who could come to the country's rescue. Obama dared America to perceive his very self as the representation of the violence that haunted white America's imagination. But as Obama materialised the threat, as it were, he conjured it away. The fact was, as his team made sure every American knew, he was only half-black. He was distant from his Kenyan father; he had been raised by his white mother. He had been safely processed through Columbia and Harvard. He was gracious, civil and polite to a fault. White liberals announced they were shedding tears of happiness at Obama's election. But black people – while they too celebrated – held their breath for him to come through on the promises he had made. He never did. Swept into power during the Great Recession with a mandate Trump has never had, Obama found himself in a space no American president had inhabited since FDR. Black leaders implored him to implement a programme that would create jobs on a huge scale; he also could have poured money into housing and education for black people. Go big, they beseeched him, you will never have another opportunity like this one. Instead the Harvard-conditioned Obama turned to his director of the National Economic Council, the Harvard icon Larry Summers, and went small. He broke his promises to black people, and to the disenfranchised. He bent his knee to the white status quo he had promised to restructure radically. And yet Obama remains the 12th-most popular president in American history. The political effects of his presidency might have been disappointing, but the experience of having a man so warm with humanity, so cultivated, intelligent and playfully ironic was transporting. If anyone knew the US's curse, and its blessing, it was a black man who, despite his biracial nature, had come through the American reality. A majority of Americans during Obama's eight years in office felt they were in the hands of someone to whom they could, in that fantastical mental place every politician yearns to create, pour their hearts out to. Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only £8.99 per month Subscribe But this must be placed alongside the toxic racism Obama's self-promoting tactic of racialism provoked, and which led directly to Maga. The two strains have coupled and produced the rough beast of an entirely new American reality. The feeling, cultivated by Obama himself, that American salvation was embodied in the experience of black Americans has now been fulfilled, darkly and ironically, by Trump, who is rapidly making more and more Americans feel like disempowered, insignificant outsiders. The conflict between the two epochs each man represents is a battle for which group has suffered the truest affliction. In the eyes of Maga, they are the real wretched of this Earth. The demonisation of American immigrants is, for them, the restoration of a new underclass that will repair their self-esteem. The threat to annul America's only black president – Trump's AI video of Obama is no less than that – is the coup de grace. So where is Obama now, in the midst of America's greatest crisis since the Civil War? He alone, of any American public figure, has the power to reduce Trump publicly to the fraud his preposterous bluster proves he is. Look at the photographs of Trump sitting alongside Obama in the White House just after Trump's election in 2016; it is no coincidence that the AI arrest video was generated from that moment. While Obama, with masterful charm, holds the room in his hand, Trump stares at the floor, insecure, embarrassed, enraged at his inferiority. Obama might reply that it would be unprecedented for a previous president to denounce a sitting one. But Trump is unprecedented. His public humiliation of and shocking threat to Obama in that video is unprecedented. What is bad form compared to a nightmare of chaos and autocracy? Obama himself, always alive to appearances, has merely 'addressed' the general liberal spinelessness. At an exclusive gathering of liberal luminaries last week, he chastised them for being 'cowed and intimidated and shrinking away from asserting what they believe, or least what they said they believe'. 'What's needed now is courage,' he declared. Yet as he did during his presidency, he is contented with golden phrases ringing with courage while displaying no courage at all. Instead, Obama and his successor have switched roles once again. Obama and his wife, Michelle, are set to executive-produce – it is almost too surreal to write – a comedy series about America history written by and starring that flame-throwing radical, 78-year-old Larry David, yet another of America's comedic tribunes who lucratively specialise in trivialising even America's most dangerous moment. Obama won't stand up to America's tyrant. And the answer to the question of why he won't – or cannot – could well be the answer to the question of how America came to its bizarre reckoning in the first place. [Further reading: The plot against Zohran Mamdani] Related
