Donald Trump's decision to fall back on attacking former President Barack Obama, who left office in 2017, is a sign that he has found himself without any defenses as the Jeffrey Epstein files controversy swamps his administration after only six months, a former Republican leader said.
In a column on Thursday, former Republican National Committee chair Michael Steele, now a host on MSNBC's "The Weeknight," claimed Trump is attacking America's first Black president to take the focus off the fact that events have taken an unexpectedly bad turn for his second term.
Noting the president posted an AI-generated video of Obama being shackled and taken away for treason, based upon a previous real Oval Office meeting, on his Truth Social account, Steele first wrote, "Trump has once again shown his lack of class and decorum by his depraved use of footage of that meeting to make an autocratic threat to distract the country from questions about his past associations with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein."
He suggested Trump's re-upping of his old grievances is a sign that "the walls are closing in."
"Trump’s political career was born out of Obama hatred," he wrote. "It was birtherism that gave him his base, the lie that Obama was foreign, un-American and undeserving of the presidency. Now, with the Epstein scandal escalating, Trump is reaching for the same playbook: distort, distract and racialize," Steele accused before observing, "In a sense, the Trump era has just been one long backlash to Obama."
He added that there is a "serious undertone" to the new war on Obama.
"He’s pulling from the authoritarian playbook by normalizing — and even celebrating — the concept of a president imprisoning his predecessor; especially if that predecessor is Barack Obama. Retribution is vindication; and vindication is at the heart of Trump’s dangerous Obama obsession." he suggested.
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