Trump is attacking Obama because he's trying to distract from coronavirus failures and unemployment: AP reporter

Americans are approaching 90,000 deaths from the coronavirus. Still, President Donald Trump has stopped talking about the pandemic to attack former President Barack Obama for a hoax or a witchhunt of some kind that he hasn't entirely clarified. Regardless of what the accusation is, Trump is the victim, and Obama is the reason everything went wrong.

During an MSNBC discussion Sunday, host Kasie Hunt explained that Trump has been touting a new conspiracy theory that he hasn't even revealed yet.

Associated Press reporter Jonathan Lemire explained that just in the time they were talking, Trump went off at the Obama administration, calling them "incompetent and corrupt," but failed to provide any evidence or explanation for what he was talking about.

"The team around him, there is some concern about where things stand right now less than six months until Election Day," said Lemire. "We know that he has received a number of briefings from his campaign staff, most famously a few weeks ago what led him to explode at his campaign manager Brad Parscale. They said he would lose. They've seen positive signs since then, they feel they've closed the gap on Vice President [Joe] Biden in a number of places. They were encouraged by a CNN swing state poll this week that had him up cumulatively in the battlegrounds that will dictate this election."

However, Lemire explained it would be a very very close race.

"Certainly, the president right now is trying to change the subject," he continued. "He doesn't want the focus to be on his handling of this pandemic, the 90,000 Americans dead, the record unemployment numbers, the really deeply depressing job statistics. And where he's chosen, he and his team, at least, for the moment, is to attack his predecessor. To try to, once again, undermine the Russia investigation, to try to link what is a relatively routine intelligence procedure of unmasking, in this case of Lt. Gen. Mike Flynn, suggesting that it was improper and nefarious, linking Vice President Biden to it, and suggesting that the Biden and the Obama administration tried to start the Trump presidency before it began, trying to sabotage it during the transition and, therefore, which ended up fueling the Russia probe that dominated, of course, the first couple years. But it's a sense right now they're sort of grasping at straws. They're trying to find attacks that work on Joe Biden, this or China, because they do not see the ability to move up the positive numbers. They're trying to drive down Joe Biden's negatives."

However, it seems that the Trump team is trying to drive down not Biden's negatives, but former President Barack Obama's. Obama isn't even on the ballot, but every attempt to attack Biden has either caused a huge international scandal and Trump's impeachment, or the GOP has been embarrassingly fact-checked. Trump's team is attempting to paint Biden as "old" and "crazy." However, given Trump's age (just a few years younger than Biden) and his bizarre statements like suggesting people inject disinfectant to fight the coronavirus, the attacks aren't exactly helping him win the small percentage of swing voters.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) blasted Obama for criticizing Trump in a private audio recording. But Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson explained that the tradition of presidents not attacking the current president doesn't exactly hold up when the current president has decided to wage an outright war against his predecessor.

"I don't think that Democrats are going to be frightened of a Trump vs. Obama contest," he said.