All posts tagged "barack obama"

None of Trump’s Obama claims are new. That’s why MAGA is baying for blood

Some of Donald Trump’s most ardent supporters are expressing wariness over the prospect of prolonged investigations into supposed crimes committed by former President Barack Obama and other high-ranking officials.

They note that Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard’s accusation of a “treasonous conspiracy” about the 2016 election recycles narratives put forward by conservative influencers in Trump’s first term.

They want to go straight to arrests.

And like many, they see Gabbard’s case against Obama as a transparent ploy to distract attention from the Jeffrey Epstein case, in which Trump’s links to the deceased financier and sex offender are increasingly under the spotlight.

Patrick Howley, a journalist who cycled through conservative media outlets before moving on to conspiracy content and eventually flagrant white nationalism and antisemitism, is a case in point.

“I’m not going to stop talking about Epstein just because Tulsi Gabbard decides to confirm the 2017 Internet yet again…. If you arrest Obama, maybe I’ll tune in,” Howley wrote on X on July 21.

Howley doubled down the following day, writing, “I’m not going to do 2017 Crossfire Hurricane content again [a reference to the FBI investigation of Russian links to Trump] unless Obama and [former Secretary of State] Hillary [Clinton] actually gets arrested. I don’t have to pretend this stuff is new just because the Admin is in damage control mode over Epstein.”

In early 2017, having worked for conservative outlets including the American Spectator, Daily Caller and Breitbart News, Howley described his new project, what would become Big League Politics, to the Atlantic as an organ for “Trump administration policies that generally fall under a populist-nationalist window.”

Howley was part of a new cohort of media provocateurs who unabashedly promoted Trump while pushing supporters towards ever more radical positions. Stories suggesting a criminal conspiracy by national security officials in the Obama administration to undermine Trump by linking him to Russia were bread and butter.

Investigations by Special Counsel Robert Mueller and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee confirmed the assessment of the Obama administration that Russia interfered in the 2016 election, including hacking Democratic National Committee emails, to benefit Trump.

Regardless, on July 21, Trump posted on Truth Social: “Obama himself manufactured the Russia, Russia, Russia HOAX, Crooked Hillary, Sleepy Joe, and numerous others participated in this, THE CRIME OF THE CENTURY!”

Trump’s recent post tracks closely with content Howley was producing more than five years ago, including a March 2019 story headlined, “HOWLEY: Here’s the Full Story of How Obama, Hillary and [former CIA Director John] Brennan Carried Out the Crime of the Century.”

In other stories from 2018 through 2020, Howley described a supposed conspiracy involving “vengeful government agents trying to play politics by bending the law against a populist candidate;” “evidence of a Democrat and establishment Republican effort to set up the Trump campaign for a future Russian collusion case;” and a “growing #ObamaGate scandal that threatens to disgrace his public legacy.”

Eclipsed by a new cohort of MAGA influencers that includes Charlie Kirk, the podcaster and CEO of Turning Point USA, Howley isn’t shy about expressing his resentment.

“That it took EIGHT YEARS to find out the Obama Intel apparatus manufactured intelligence to delegitimize and cripple the Trump administration is a scandal all unto itself,” Kirk posted on X on July 21, garnering 1.1 million views. “Why on earth did it take so long?”

“Because you guys just recycle the same old stuff at opportune moments while also ignoring certain stories at pivotal moments based on the whims of the handlers who run conservative media?” Howley retorted, pulling only 1,355 views.

Steve Bannon, MAGA’s lead strategist and a vocal proponent for Trump to arrest political enemies, once employed Howley at Breitbart and praised him as “smart, tough and aggressive.”

'Bits of red meat'

Howley’s impatience with perpetual promises of “arrests” appears to be shared by a growing number of Trump supporters.

Joe Biggs, a Proud Boys leader convicted of seditious conspiracy who worked as a reporter for the conspiracy theory website InfoWars in 2016, posted on X on July 19: “I’ve been hearing Hillary for prison and so much more for years. Yet nothing ever happened. It’s the same ole song and dance; the only difference is the year. Republicans are spineless cowards. Always have been and always will. I hope they prove me wrong, but I’m not holding my breath.”

Owen Shroyer, an InfoWars host convicted of illegally entering the Capitol grounds on Jan. 6 (and pardoned by Trump), lamented on X: “The only reason we’re talking about Obama and Russian Collusion Hoax is because no one was arrested in Trump’s first term. So is this the new Republican game? Talk about deep state criminals on the campaign but never arrest them?”

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), who was elected in 2020 after embracing the QAnon conspiracy theory, warned that Trump’s base will turn if he doesn’t deliver arrests.

“If you tell the base of people, who support you, of deep state treasonous crimes, election interference, blackmail, and rich powerful elite evil cabals, then you must take down every enemy of The People,” she posted on X on July 21. “If not. // The base will turn and there’s no going back. // Dangling bits of red meat never satisfied. // They want the whole steak dinner and nothing else will satisfy.”

For some Trump followers, the logical next step is violence.

Responding to Howley’s complaint that “influencers can come up with different strategies to try to dupe us or silence us about how nothing ever happens,” while “arrests and transformational change” remain elusive,” one X user responded: “Yes. // The only way s--- every gets done is violence.”

After Gabbard’s claims about a “years-long coup” and “treasonous conspiracy,” the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism clocked a surge of comments on the social media platforms Truth Social, Gab and Telegram “targeting Obama as treasonous and deserving of either imprisonment or a form of capital punishment.”

This 'Dark Triad' shows MAGA is sick enough to believe Trump's Obama lies

When the walls start closing in, Donald Trump doesn’t lawyer up: he doubles down. With Jeffrey Epstein’s ghost rattling through the headlines and the threat of explosive disclosures looming, Team Trump has rolled out its most cynical, racially-charged distraction yet: accuse Barack Obama of treason.

It’s not about justice. It’s not about truth. It’s a deliberate psyop meant to hijack the news cycle, enrage the MAGA base, and erase Epstein’s name from every chyron in America.

Which is why it appears that the Trump White House is closing in on the conclusion that the only story that could be “big enough” to blow Epstein off the front pages will be “Obama Committed Treason!”

They’re busily assigning investigators, FBI agents, lawyers, and others in the Justice Department to find everything they can that might implicate our first Black president in having committed High Crimes and Misdemeanors.

Democrats and many in the media are essentially ridiculing the effort, arguing that nobody is naïve enough — or malicious enough — to believe such a story. But things that seem illogical or even flat-out nuts to reporters and Democrats may, according to a scientific study published in recent months, make perfect sense for Trump supporters.

Titled Malevolent vs. Benevolent Dispositions and Conservative Political Ideology in the Trump Era and published last fall in The Journal of Research in Personality, the authors looked at the personality factors that showed up consistently among Trump supporters versus the rest of the American population.

What they found is both shocking and absolutely consistent with the observations and suspicions of those of us who have to regularly interact with Trump followers: they’re sick, at least by the standards of liberal democracy. They lack empathy and even get pleasure out of watching other people in pain.

In the conclusions section of their published article, the University of North Texas Psychology Department researchers explain:

“We examined the associations between broad dispositions with political ideology that included views of Trump. Malevolent (+) and benevolent (− ) dispositions predicted this ideology. In aggregate, those favorable to Trump reported greater malevolent and lower benevolent propensities, less empathy, and more enjoyment of others’ suffering.”

Given that Trump is quickly moving America toward autocracy, it shouldn’t be surprising that he himself displays the so-called Dark Triad of personality characteristics that are so easily observed in historical figures like Hitler, Pinochet, Mussolini, and modern-day autocrats like Putin, Orbán, and Erdoğan:

“Autocrats manifest socially aversive personality, including malevolent traits in the Dark Triad: narcissism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism, and the same has been found for Trump. Similar results have been found for authoritarians’ loyal foot soldiers. … Thus, it is not surprising perhaps that voters with aversive traits tend to prefer aversive political figures.”

They point out that there are numerous studies that have been done over the years showing that people with “malevolent” dispositions tend toward conservatism while those with “benevolent” personalities are more likely to be liberals. They define their terms in clear, analytical language:

“A malevolent disposition reflects wishing ill will or doing harm to others, while a benevolent disposition involves intending or showing goodwill or kindness to others …

“A malevolent disposition is measured via aversive features of Machiavellian manipulativeness, psychopathic callousness, and narcissistic self-absorption, all negatively associated with empathy and positively associated with antisocial behavior.”

As they note, Trump rings all the malevolent bells, but they wanted to know if his followers also had the same antisocial personality traits:

“A political candidate who boasts about being able to shoot someone can be understood in terms of a malevolent disposition. We seek to understand the voters who embrace such a politician and propose that insight may be gained by examining the links between malevolent dispositions and political ideology.

“Taken together, we propose that more extreme (malevolent) dispositions are necessary for understanding today’s modern incarnation of conservatism that includes a positive view of Trump.”

What they found was that — among white men — the stronger the constellation of antisocial personality characteristics a person carried, the more likely they were to support Trump and support him with a fervor that reflected the intensity of those qualities.

It was so vivid that even those on the extreme end of the antisocial spectrum — psychopaths — were generally enthusiastic about Trump and his policies, regardless (or perhaps because) of how many people those policies hurt:

“Across two different samples, we found a positive association between conservative ideology/positive view of Trump and malevolent disposition. For white men, psychopathic propensities predicted conservative ideology/positive view of Trump …

“Thus, the current results add to a growing literature on a link between malevolent (aversive) dispositions and conservative ideology. Moreover, our results are in line with Barber and Pope (2019) who found those tied to a Trumpian symbolic ideology were most inclined to be uncivil to others. The results from both samples found that latent psychopathic and malevolent disposition means were significantly elevated among individuals who viewed Trump favorably.”

Interestingly, they noted that among racial minorities and women carrying many of these same personality characteristics, there wasn’t the same strong correlation between antisocial personalities and support for Trump; they mused that “sociocultural factors must be at play as well.”

This was because, they concluded, discrimination and the violence often associated with it had shaped even the authoritarians among minorities and women to be more liberal, more accepting of others, and less willing to go along with policies that hurt other people:

“Longitudinal research suggests that race/ethnicity may moderate the associations of RWA (Right Wing Authoritarianism) and SDO (Social Dominance Orientation) with conservative political behavior and gender might moderate the association between personality and conservatism with a stronger association for males than females. These moderation effects may be due in part to the fact that RWA and SDO are linked with racism and sexism.”

Which brings us to the big question they must be debating right now in the White House: Will indicting or even trying Obama for treason be enough to cause even “liberal” college-educated reporters and media executives to decide that it’s a big enough story to eclipse their now-nearly-constant coverage of Trump’s association with Epstein and the young women and girls they are widely believed to have exploited?

Trump and his people already know that going after our nation’s only Black president is good politics when it comes to their base, and right now that’s the group they’re most freaked out about losing. If the base goes, Trump won’t be far behind. It wasn’t until Nixon’s public approval ratings had collapsed among the GOP base in 1974 that Barry Goldwater felt safe visiting the White House and telling him it was time to leave.

That suggests that they’ll go all in on attacking Obama, perhaps even manufacturing information or — like Tulsi Gabbard is now doing — coming up with straw man arguments that are close enough to truth to confuse the majority of Americans. The strategy seems to be working over on Fox “News” and on rightwing hate radio, which have been pounding on the Obama “treason” story for several days now with few signs of letting up.

I’m skeptical, however, that mainstream media outlets will go along with this unless they’re subjected to overwhelming pressure from the Trump White House. And until those news and opinion operations have a change of focus, Trump is going to find it very hard to put Epstein and his victims behind him.

Their second bet on this, being acted on by House Speaker Mike Johnson, is to assume that if they can shut down Congress for a month it’ll put a halt to all political conversations during the August summer vacation season, leading to a recess of sorts on the Epstein issue. Historically — as I’ve learned from doing political talk radio for 23 years now — the summer is pretty dead when it comes to politics.

This is probably wishful thinking in the Epstein/Trump case, however, because Trump can’t keep himself off the TV. He has a deep, neurotic need for attention and approval (which he interprets as love) that, as I lay out in detail in my new book The Last American President: A Broken Man, a Corrupt Party, and a World on the Brink, drives him to constantly draw attention to himself.

Also, when Congress reconvenes in September it’s likely the discharge petition requiring a full confidential disclosure to members of Congress of the Epstein files — that will have “ripened” by then and thus be subject to a vote — will still be there.

Nonetheless, because Trump and the people around him all suffer from the same collection of personality disorders and assume that most other people think the same way they do, I’d bet that they’ll still go after Obama in as big a way as they can.

This isn’t just a political maneuver: it’s a scorched-earth strategy born of desperation and malevolence. Trump and his enablers know their only way out is down, dragging the country with them into a pit of conspiracy, vengeance, and manufactured outrage.

If the media blinks, if Democrats shrug, if the public falls for the bait, the damage won’t just be another headline. It’ll be a rupture in the fabric of truth itself.

The only question now is: will America call the bluff, or fall for the con?

Will it succeed?

Will it backfire?

Will Obama finally get up on his hind legs and start fighting (unlike when the GOP stole his nomination of Garland to the Supreme Court and he didn’t say much at all)?

Will JD Vance finally get the shot at the presidency that he so clearly seems to crave?

Stay tuned…

Is Trump's Obama attack really a stunning confession?

Earlier this week, when reporters asked him about Jeffrey Epstein, Donald Trump deflected with a planned story about former President Barack Obama's "criminality." His unhinged expose deserves a verbatim read:

“After what they did to me — and whether it’s right or wrong, it’s time to go after people. Obama’s been caught directly… What they did in 2016 and 2020 is very criminal. It’s criminal at the highest level. So that’s really the things you should be talking about (instead of Epstein) … Look, he’s guilty. It’s not a question … This was treason. This was every word you can think of. They tried to steal the election. They tried to obfuscate the election.”

Trump’s rant followed Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard’s claims that she uncovered “overwhelming evidence” that Obama’s administration manipulated intelligence to “lay the groundwork for what was essentially a years-long coup against President Trump.” No doubt seeking to recover favor after she crossed Trump on Iran’s enriched uranium plans, Gabbard announced on social media that she was making a criminal referral of the case to the Justice Department.

Epstein won't go away

Trump’s well-photographed and documented relationship with Epstein, including regular appearances at social events in Palm Beach and New York, dates back to the 1980s. Their close friendship fell apart in the mid-2000s, according to the Washington Post, over a real estate deal.

Bondi informed Trump in May that he was named in the Epstein files, which Trump denied. In response to current demands to release the Epstein file in its entirety, Trump is now directing his AG to release “all credible” evidence from those files, meaning, whatever information Bondi, in her sole discretion, deems “credible.” If that directive isn’t code for “scrub my name off those files and accuse my critics,” nothing is.

It's painfully obvious that if Trump really wanted to release “all credible evidence,” including how many times he flew on the Lolita Express, he would simply release the files. Instead, House Speaker Mike Johnson sent the House home early to avoid a vote forcing the release of the files.

Trump does not want the public musing over how close he and Epstein actually were, so he’s dancing around it, creating a ruse about “credible evidence” and “grand jury testimony” that has absolutely nothing to do with Trump and Epstein’s decades-long, one- -on-one relationship built on “shared secrets.”

Another key witness

On Wednesday, Bondi also posted a statement from her Deputy AG, Todd Blanche, saying he was seeking access to Ghislaine Maxwell. Maxwell, serving a 20-year sentence for sex trafficking minors for Epstein, hopes for clemency to avoid spending the rest of her life in prison.

Hmm, what could be inappropriate here? How about the fact that Trump is trying to turn a convicted sexual predator into a pro-Trump character witness in the court of public opinion? How about the fact that Maxwell would likely say what Trump wants to hear only if there's something in it for her, like a presidential pardon or a commutation of her sentence?

Blanche announced that, “If Ghislaine Maxwell has information about anyone who has committed crimes against victims, the FBI and the DOJ will hear what she has to say.” Never mind that Maxwell told the judge during her trial she had no other information to add. Trump wants his people to get to Maxwell first, to shape and tease out any additional “information” with implied incentives.

Maxwell’s obvious incentive to tell Trump what he wants to hear already makes her credibility suspect. Equally important, the DOJ previously named Maxwell a “pervasive liar.” In 2021, prosecutors told the judge overseeing her trial that Maxwell was willing to “brazenly lie under oath about her conduct.” They noted two prior perjury counts that showed “her willingness to flout the law in order to protect herself.”

Rabbits from the hat

Trump has been pulling every rabbit out of every purple hat to make Epstein go away. This past week, in a press statement with 25th Amendment incapacity written all over it, he said he was going to arrest President Obama and Hillary Clinton and the “many, many people” who worked under them. The batshit lunacy of his words should be savored verbatim.

Trump even inserted immigration and his universally debunked stolen election claims into the attack, adding, “And by the way, it morphed into the 2020 race, and the 2020 race was rigged, and it was, it was a rigged election. And because it was rigged, we have millions of people in our country, we have — we had inflation, we solved the inflation problem. But millions and millions of people came into our country because of that, and people that shouldn't have been, people from gangs and from jails and from mental institutions…”

Following Trump’s word salad breakdown, President Obama’s spokesperson responded with: “Out of respect for the office of the presidency, our office does not normally dignify the constant nonsense and misinformation flowing out of this White House with a response. But these claims are outrageous enough to merit one. These bizarre allegations are ridiculous and a weak attempt at distraction. Nothing in the [Tulsi Gabbard] document issued last week undercuts the widely accepted conclusion that Russia worked to influence the 2016 presidential election but did not successfully manipulate any votes. These findings were affirmed in a 2020 report by the bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee, led by then-Chairman Marco Rubio.”

Russia’s interference on Trump’s behalf was confirmed in a 950-page bipartisan Senate report: “The Committee’s bipartisan Report found that Russia’s goal in its unprecedented hack-and-leak operation against the United States in 2016, among other motives, was to assist the Trump Campaign. Candidate Trump and his Campaign responded to that threat by embracing, encouraging, and exploiting the Russian effort.”

Trump’s treason accusation is an obvious attempt to steer national headlines away from Epstein. It is absurd enough to be humorous. But given that Trump routinely projects his own crimes onto others, and consistently supports Putin over America’s interests, perhaps his “treason” allegation is, in fact, Trump’s confession.

Sabrina Haake is a columnist and 25+ year federal trial attorney specializing in 1^st and 14^th A defense. Her Substack, The Haake Take, is free.

Four presidents have tried Trump's favorite hardline tactic. It doesn't work

By Kevin Johnson, Dean and Professor of Public Interest Law and Chicana/o Studies, University of California, Davis.

All modern U.S. presidents, both Republican and Democratic, have attempted to reduce the population of millions of undocumented immigrants. But their various strategies have not had significant results, with the population hovering around 11 million from 2005 to 2022.

President Donald Trump seeks to change that.

With harsh rhetoric that has sowed fear in immigrant communities, and policies that ignore immigrants’ due process rights, Trump has pursued deportation tactics that differ dramatically from those of any other modern U.S. president.

As a scholar who examines the history of U.S. immigration law and enforcement, I believe that it remains far from clear whether the Trump White House will significantly reduce the undocumented population. But even if the administration’s efforts fail, the fear and damage to the U.S. immigrant community will remain.

Bush and Obama

To increase deportations, in 2006 President George W. Bush began using workplace raids. Among these sweeps was the then-largest immigration workplace operation in U.S. history at a meat processing plant in Postville, Iowa in 2008.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) deployed 900 agents in Postville and arrested 398 employees, 98% of whom were Latino. They were chained together and arraigned in groups of 10 for felony criminal charges of aggravated identity theft, document fraud and use of stolen Social Security numbers. Some 300 were convicted, and 297 of them served jail sentences before being deported.

In 2008, Bush also initiated Secure Communities, a policy that sought to deport noncitizens — both lawful permanent residents as well as undocumented immigrants — who had been arrested for crimes. Some 2 million immigrants were deported during Bush’s two terms in office.

The Obama administration limited Secure Communities to focus on the removal of noncitizens convicted of felonies. It deported a record 400,000 noncitizens in fiscal year 2013, which led detractors to refer to President Barack Obama as the “Deporter in Chief.”

Obama also targeted recent entrants and national security threats and pursued criminal prosecutions for illegal reentry to the U.S. Almost all of these policies built on Bush’s, although Obama virtually abandoned workplace raids.

Despite these enforcement measures, Obama also initiated Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, in 2012. The policy provided relief from deportation and gave work authorization to more than 500,000 undocumented immigrants who came to the United States as children.

Obama deported about 3 million noncitizens, but the size of the undocumented population did not decrease dramatically.

Trump and Biden

Trump’s first administration broke new immigration enforcement ground in several ways.

He began his presidency by issuing what was called a “Muslim ban” to restrict the entry into the U.S. of noncitizens from predominantly Muslim nations.

Early in Trump’s first administration, federal agents expanded immigration operations to include raids at courthouses, which previously had been off-limits.

In 2017, Trump tried to rescind DACA, but the Supreme Court rejected Trump’s effort in 2020.

In 2019, Trump implemented the Remain in Mexico policy that for the first time forced noncitizens who came to the U.S. border seeking asylum to wait in Mexico while their claims were being decided. He also invoked Title 42 in 2020 to close U.S. borders during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Trump succeeded in reducing legal immigration numbers during his first term. However, there is no evidence that his enforcement policies reduced the size of the overall undocumented population.

President Joe Biden sought to relax — although not abandon — some immigration enforcement measures implemented during Trump’s first term.

His administration slowed construction of the border wall championed by Trump. Biden also stopped workplace raids in 2021, and in 2023, he ended Title 42.

In 2023, Biden sought to respond to migration surges in a measured fashion, by temporarily closing ports of entry and increasing arrests.

In attempting to enforce the borders, his administration at times pursued tough measures. Biden continued deportation efforts directed at criminal noncitizens. Immigrant rights groups criticized his administration when armed Border Patrol officers on horseback were videotaped chasing Haitian migrants on the U.S.-Mexico border.

As of 2022, the middle of the Biden’s term, an estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants lived in the U.S.

Trump's second chance

Since his second inauguration, Trump has pursued a mass deportation campaign through executive orders that are unprecedented in their scope.

In January 2025, he announced an expanded, expedited removal process for any noncitizen apprehended anywhere in the country — not just the border region, as had been U.S. practice since 1996.

In March, Trump issued a presidential proclamation to deport Venezuelan nationals who were members of the Tren de Aragua gang, designated a foreign terrorist organization by the State Department. In doing so, he invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, an act used three times in U.S. history during declared wars that empowers presidents to remove foreign nationals from countries at war with the U.S.

Declaring an “invasion” of migrants into the U.S. in June, Trump deployed the military to assist in immigration enforcement in Los Angeles.

Trump also sought to dramatically upend birthright citizenship, the Constitutional provision that guarantees citizenship to any person born in the U.S. He issued an executive order in January that would bar citizenship to people born in the U.S. to undocumented parents.

The birthright executive order has been challenged in federal court and is mostly likely working its way up to the Supreme Court.

Under the second Trump administration, immigration arrests are up, but actual deportation numbers are in flux.

ICE in June arrested the most people in a month in at least five years, roughly 30,000 immigrants. But deportations of noncitizens — roughly 18,000 — lagged behind those during the Obama administration’s record-setting year of 2013 in which more than 400,000 noncitizens were deported.

The gap between arrests and deportations shows the challenges the Trump administration faces in making good on his promised mass deportation campaign.

Undocumented immigrants often come to the U.S. to work or seek safety from natural disasters and mass violence.

These issues have not been seriously addressed by any modern U.S. president. Until it is, we can expect the undocumented population to remain in the millions.

These horrifying posts show how Trump and Gabbard fuel far-right threats

On July 18, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard made a post on Twitter alleging “the most powerful people in the Obama administration,” including former President Barack Obama, were involved in a “years-long coup” and a “treasonous conspiracy” against Donald Trump.

Her post quickly went viral, amassing over 13 million views over the weekend, and galvanized the online fringe to fantasize about violence against their political enemies. Trump fanned Gabbard’s flames, sharing a racist AI-generated video of Obama being arrested on Truth Social, which Trump owns.

Major news stories generally act as flashpoints for extremists online to ramp up their spread of hatred and advocating for violence.

This time was no different, as extremists, clearly inspired by Trump and Gabbard’s posts, were given new reasons to target their long-time nemesis, former President Obama.

The Global Project Against Hate and Extremism’s (GPAHE) research on unmoderated platforms like Truth Social, Gab, and Telegram, which are frequently used to spew hatred and share violent political fantasies, found that users directed racist comments at Obama, and his wife Michelle, and dreamt of political violence, suggesting Obama should face a firing squad or public execution by hanging, a crude reference to America’s dark history of racist mobs lynching Black people.

On Truth Social, comments made between July 17 and July 20 targeting Obama as treasonous and deserving of either imprisonment or execution rose to a high of 56 comments on July 19, reflecting a frightening 1,767% increase.

Gabbard’s post enraged Trump supporters who were quick to call for a military tribunal against Obama, demanding that Attorney General Pam Bondi “get them all now and don’t waste another day… The punishment for Treason is Hanging,” and that Obama and his former cabinet “should all [be] put up against a wall for a firing squad.”

One user expressed glee at the possibility of Obama being “prosecuted for the death penalty,” saying “I’m so happy finally accountability for that corrupt piece of dog sh–t.” Another called for “public trials and public executions” against former members of the Obama administration, saying “our enemies are from within not foreign,” sharing a similar remark from Vice President JD Vance, who in a February address to European leaders warned them of “the threat from within.”

On Gab, a platform similar to Twitter, comments made between July 17 and July 20 targeting Obama as treasonous and deserving of either imprisonment or execution rose from nine to 48, representing a 433% increase.

Users responded to Gabbard’s allegations by further accusing “commie Jews and black democrats” of “kill[ing] the American elections system.” Others exclaimed they weren’t satisfied with an arrest, saying “Obama should be prosecuted for treason, all asset ceases, and both him and Mooochelle deported to Tanzania,” but would “settle for a firing squad of all on [pay-per-view].” In the same comment, the user accuses Obama of being a “Radical Islamic Terrorist Sympathizer” whose goal was to transform America “into a socialist black terrorist sh–t-hole.”

Users called for Obama to be lynched, writing, “All you need is some rope and a little wood.” Others wanted to take justice into their own hands, including one user who claimed, “I WILL DESTROY AND JAIL ALL OF THE FAKE NEWS MSM ALL CRIMINAL POLITICAL HACKS AND ALL DEEP STATE PLAYERS WILL BE TRIED AND EXCUTED!!!!!!”

On Telegram, comments made between July 17 and July 20 targeting Obama as treasonous and deserving of either imprisonment or death rose from none to 12.

A manual review by GPAHE of private Telegram groups not immediately accessible by scraping revealed numerous other similar posts. Telegram channels, including ones associating themselves with the conspiratorial QAnon movement, were excited about the prospect of Obama being convicted of treason, which would lead to him facing “the rest of his life in federal prison or the death penalty.”

Other chat groups on Telegram, which associate themselves with far-right influencers such as Catturd and extremist groups like the white supremacist Proud Boys, had several users calling to hang Obama (“he should swing,” “let’s see him swing on national TV”), including calls to “hang them all” and “have a huge fireworks exhibition,” while others fantasized about “DOZENS of executions,” saying “MAKE PUBLIC HANGINGS GREAT AGAIN,” a reference to Trump’s motto, “Make America Great Again.”

Trump has long threatened his political opponents with persecution, dating back to his first election campaign against Hillary Clinton when calls to “lock her up” ran rampant at his rallies (Clinton was never charged with any crime). He’s since continued his assault on democracy by targeting judges who’ve ruled against him, and now Democrats such as Obama and Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA), who Trump said should go to prison.

Trump’s targeting of the judiciary has already led to judges experiencing growing, targeted threats against themselves and their families. And there has been other horrific political violence. In June, a Christian nationalist assassinated Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman (DFL-34B) and her husband, seemingly with political motivations.

With violent rhetoric targeting Obama beginning to spread on fringe platforms, fueled by Trump’s and Gabbard’s posts, we risk further normalizing political violence which is already on the rise.

GPAHE’s research regularly reveals spikes in online bigoted and violent rhetoric whenever the president targets people with his online posts. The combination of Director Gabbard and President Trump’s conspiracy-laden and racist posts not only inflamed extremists, but further normalized language, racism, and other ideas that are completely unacceptable in a thriving democracy.

We, as a nation, cannot contribute to this normalization by staying silent.

Wendy Via and Heidi Beirich are co-founders of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism.

'Irrefutable proof!' Trump makes wild claims that Obama tried to 'lead a coup'

During an Oval Office meeting with Philippines President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. on Tuesday, President Donald Trump kept circling back to attack former President Barack Obama, regardless of the reporters' questions.

Even when asked about information Trump has received on the man who tried to assassinate him in Butler, PA, before the 2024 election, Trump ended up accusing Obama of staging a "coup" against him.

"You know, they went into him very, you know, in great detail," Trump began saying about would-be assassin Thomas Matthew Crooks. "And I spoke with the FBI — the new FBI. I spoke to the FBI. If it was the old FBI, I wouldn't have believed a thing they said because the old FBI under Comey was crooked as hell."

Trump then started talking about the Horowitz Report, the 2018 Inspector General study that looked into the FBI and DOJ's actions during the 2016 election.

"That report has gotten lost and it shouldn't be lost. You should all go back, and it should be mandatory reading. Go back and read the Horowitz report on Comey and his cronies, and you'll see exactly. We're going to add that to all the stuff that we found," Trump said, referring to a DOJ investigation into Comey and former CIA Director John Brennan.

"We found absolute — this isn't like evidence or — this is like proof, irrefutable proof, that Obama was seditious, that Obama was trying to lead a coup and it was with Hillary Clinton, with all these other people," Trump continued. "But Obama headed it up. And, you know, I get a kick when I hear everyone talks about people I've never even heard of, it was this way — no, no, it was Obama. He headed it up and it says so right in the papers."

Trump called it "the biggest scandal in the history of our country."

Watch the clip below via CNN.

Don't blame liberals — or reporters — for politicizing the court

By Joshua Boston, Associate Professor of Political Science, Bowling Green State University, and Christopher Krewson, Assistant Professor of Political Science, Brigham Young University.

The U.S. Supreme Court has always ruled on politically controversial issues. From elections to civil rights, from abortion to free speech, the justices frequently weigh in on the country’s most debated problems.

And because of the court’s influence over national policy, political parties and interest groups battle fiercely over who gets appointed to the high court.

The public typically finds out about the court — including its significant decisions and the politics surrounding appointments — from the news media. While elected officeholders and candidates make direct appeals to their voters, the justices and Supreme Court nominees are different — they largely rely on the news to disseminate information about the court, giving the public at least a cursory understanding.

Recently, something has changed in newspaper coverage of the Supreme Court. As scholars of judicial politics, political institutions and political behavior, we set out to understand precisely how media coverage of the court has changed over the past 40 years. Specifically, we analyzed the content of every article referencing the Supreme Court in five major newspapers from 1980 to 2023.

Of course, people get their news from a variety of sources, but we have no reason to believe the trends we uncovered in our research of traditional newspapers do not apply broadly. Research indicates that alternative media sources largely follow the lead of traditional beat reporters.

What we found: Politics has a much stronger presence in articles today than in years past, with a notable increase beginning in 2016.

When public goodwill prevailed

Not many cases have been more important in the past quarter-century or, from a partisan perspective, more contentious than Bush v. Gore — the December 2000 ruling that stopped a ballot recount, resulting in then-Texas Governor George W. Bush defeating Democratic candidate Al Gore and winning the presidential election.

Bush v. Gore is particularly interesting to us because nine unelected, life-tenured justices functionally decided an election.

Surprisingly, the court’s public support didn’t suffer, ostensibly because the court had built up a sufficient store of public goodwill.

One reason public support remained steady following Bush v. Gore might be newspaper coverage. Although the court’s decision reflected the justices’ ideologies, with the more conservative members effectively voting to end the recount and its more liberal members voting in favor of the recount, newspapers largely ignored the role of politics in the decision.

For example, the New York Times case coverage indicated the justices’ names and their votes but mentioned neither the party of the president who appointed them nor their ideological leanings. The words “Democrat,” “Republican,” “liberal” and “conservative” — what we call political frames — do not appear in the Dec. 13, 2000, story about the decision.

This epitomizes court-related newspaper articles from the 1980s to the early 2000s, when reporters treated the court as a nonpolitical institution. According to our research, court-related news articles in the New York Times, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times and Wall Street Journal hardly used political frames during that time.

Instead, newspapers perpetuated a dominant belief among the public that Supreme Court decisions were based almost completely on legal principles rather than political preferences. This belief, in turn, bolstered support for the court.

Recent newspaper coverage reveals a starkly different pattern.

A contemporary political court

It would be nearly impossible to read contemporary articles about the Supreme Court without getting the impression that it is just as political as Congress and the presidency.

Analyzing our data from 1980 to 2023, the average number of political frames per article tripled. To be sure, politics has always played a role in the court’s decisions. Now, newspapers are making that clear. The question is when this change occurred.

Across the five major newspapers, reporting about the court has gradually become more political over time. That isn’t surprising: America has been gradually polarizing since the 1980s as well, and the changes in news media coverage reflect that polarization.

Take February of 2016, when Justice Antonin Scalia unexpectedly died. Of course, justices have died while serving on the court before. But Scalia was a conservative icon, and his death could have swung the court to the center or the left.

How the politics of naming his successor played out after Scalia’s death was unprecedented.

President Barack Obama’s nomination effort to put Merrick Garland on the court were stonewalled. The Senate majority leader, Republican Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, said the Senate would not consider any nomination until after the presidential election, nine months from Scalia’s death.

Republican candidate Donald Trump, seeing an opening, promised to fill the vacancy with a conservative justice who would overturn Roe v. Wade. The court and the 2016 election became inseparable.

Scalia vacancy changed everything

February 2016 brought about an abrupt and lasting change in newspaper coverage. The day before Scalia’s death, a typical article referencing the court used 3.22 political frames.

The day after, 10.48.

We see an uptick in political frames if we consider annual changes as well. In 2015, newspapers averaged 3.50 political frames per article about the Supreme Court. Then, in 2016, 5.30.

Using a variety of statistical methods to identify enduring framing shifts, we consistently find February 2016 as the moment newspapers shifted to higher levels of political framing of the court. We find the number of political frames in newspapers remained elevated through 2023.

How stories frame something shapes how people think about it.

If an article frames a court decision as “originalist” — an analytical approach that says constitutional texts should be interpreted as they were understood at the time they became law — then readers might think of the court as legalistic.

But if the newspaper were to frame the decision as “conservative,” then readers might think of the court as ideological.

We found in our study that when people read an article about a court decision using political frames, court approval declines. That’s because most people desire a legal court rather than a political one. No wonder polls today find the court with precariously low public support.

We do not necessarily hold journalists responsible for the court’s dramatic decline in public support. The bigger issue may be the court rather than reporters. If the court acts politically, and the justices behave ideologically, then reporters are doing their job: writing accurate stories.

That poses yet another problem. Before Trump’s three court appointments, the bench was known for its relative balance. Sometimes decisions were liberal; other times, conservative.

In June 2013, the court provided protections to same-sex marriages. Two days earlier, the court struck down part of the Voting Rights Act. A liberal win, a conservative win — that’s what we might expect from a legal institution.

Today the court is different. For most salient issues, the court supports conservative policies.

Given, first, the media’s willingness to emphasize the court’s politics, and second, the justices’ ideologically consistent decisions across critical issues, it is unlikely that the news media retreats from political framing anytime soon.

If that’s the case, the court may need to adjust to its low public approval.

America said it was ready for change — until a Black man was put in charge

After the Great Depression and World War II, a consensus was born in which most people most of the time believed federal law and the federal government should serve everyone and treat everyone equally.

That they did not actually do that was the political basis for the rights movements that emerged in the decades after the war. Until the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act, it wasn’t really possible to say liberalism and democracy were the same thing. Afterward, it was. And every rights movement since that era seemed to affix the idea of political progress, as if history always marched toward it.

But this consensus had the makings of its own undoing. Basically, the forces of white power conceded, saying: “OK, women and Black people (and other outpeople) can have equal rights and equal protection, but they can’t really be in charge of anything. They can’t really have authority, especially not over those of us who are 'real Americans.'” Then came Barack Obama’s election. The whole thing came down.

Samantha Hancox-Li has a different read on history, with different years of the origins of this bargain, what she calls a “constitutional settlement.” In a recent essay for Liberal Currents, for which she is an editor and podcast host, she pegs the present crisis to the end of “the long 1990s,” or the consensus that held between 1982 and 2024. But her point remains – that the biggest question in American politics, the one that animates everything, has always been who belongs and who doesn’t. Her conclusion? “There is America enough for everyone.”

JS: Sometimes I feel like the Democratic Party is still in the 1990s. James Carville, "moderation," the economy before “cultural issues.” You wrote about that recently. What’s the elevator version of your thinking?

SHI: Mainstream Democrats have been sleepwalking for a long time now, imagining that they can just fiddle around the edges of the existing political-economic order and that will be enough.

It is obviously not enough. The cost of living crisis — the housing crisis — is biting harder and harder, and hardest of all in blue states. This is no accident. The economic policies Democrats are offering to the American people do not work. We need to offer a future in which there is enough for everyone — and that means getting rid of our insane process obsessions that prevent people from building green energy and new factories and housing most of all.

JS: The successes of the 1990s are not the failures of the 2020s?

SHI: As I wrote in The Present Crisis and the End of the Long 90s, the constitutional settlement of the long 1990s (1982-2024) included economic, cultural and political components. The economic component was managed inflation and slow growth, palliated by asset inflation (especially home-equity inflation). This was a clear improvement over the stagflation that preceded it, but an inherently unsustainable bargain. We need to return to an economy driven by wage growth — and which builds enough stuff to alleviate the potential for inflation.

The cultural settlement was a kind of racial and sexual hypocrisy. Outright racism and sexism was out, but at the same time, America remained a de facto white man's republic. After the bruising unrest — and occasional extreme violence — of the 1960s and 1970s, this seemed like a good bargain to both sides. But it was likewise inherently unsustainable. The children of that era grew up believing we could be anything we wanted. And when we crashed into the hard barriers that remained, it felt like a betrayal. Meanwhile, the old guard was shocked and appalled that we wanted to rise above our station. Barack Obama, Black Lives Matter, MeToo – these were shocks to their system.

To reforge a new order means delivering on the promise of America. There is America enough for everyone, and anyone who wants to be can become an American — endowed with the same fundamental equality we all possess. This means, among other things, finally resolving the long-stewing border crisis — in favor of radically increased immigration and a clear, simple pathway to citizenship.

JS: You suggest Bidenomics went far, but not far enough. Explain.

SHI: Bidenomics overturned the 1990s consensus in two interrelated ways. First, Biden returned to explicit industrial policy. He promoted massive public investment in specific sectors — computer chips, green energy, batteries — largely due to geopolitical competition from China.

Second, Biden embraced "hot" macroeconomic policy, both from industrial policy and covid-era direct stimulus. This led to dramatic real wage growth, especially among the working class, as well as very strong GDP growth — far stronger than any comparable industrialized country.

The problem is that Biden stimulated the economy without alleviating the artificial scarcity of fundamental goods like housing, health care and education. The resulting inflationary pressures were strongly disliked by many people. Even as real wages increased and consumer goods became ever more available, a safe and secure life seemed out of reach.

The epitome of this problem is a flat-screen TV in the tent of a homeless person — or a brand-new Lexus parked in front of a hundred-year-old tenement in Jersey City that retails for a million dollars. Luxuries have become cheap, even as essentials have grown astoundingly expensive.

What is needed is a policy that can marry a hot economy, high growth, and abundance of fundamental goods for everyone. We don't just want cheap TVs — we want cheap housing, cheap health care, cheap education.

JS: Trump is the backlash against the compromise of the Long 90s falling apart. Are we seeing a backlash to the backlash or is it all vibes now?

SHI: I think that no one has yet been able to put together a political package that can unite the American people around a new constitutional settlement. The landslide victories and political consolidations of FDR and Reagan remain out of reach. Trump is a borderline senile old man, surrounded by scheming courtiers who fight with each other constantly. There is no coherent economic agenda coming from Trump II. Their political projects are based on delusional and conspiratorial thinking. Elon Musk, for instance, appears to sincerely believe the "woke mind virus" is a Marxist conspiracy pushed by a cabal of university professors called "the Cathedral." There is no prospect here of putting together a new consensus.

At the same time, the Democratic Party seems adrift. We are still barnacled over by delusional NIMBYs who are convinced they are rebels against the system, instead of recognizing that they have been putting their preferred policies into place for 40 years – and delivering us into the mess we're in today. We need to clean up our own house, ditch the wreckers and the fools and the NIMBYs, if we are to consolidate the American people around a new program.

JS: A new consensus would probably come out of the immigration debate. Right now, the Democrats are too interested in conceding to Republican bad faith — "open borders" — instead of forging their own path.

SHI: For years, Democrats have been running away from the immigration question. Polling says that immigration is their weak point, so they avoid talking about it — which only furthers that appearance of weakness. And the American people notice.

Just like they've noticed these past few weeks when a few brave Democrats, like Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), made a point of confronting Trump's stupid and lawless and unconstitutional immigration policies, and Trump's poll numbers have dropped like a rock.

Because this is the thing. The border is not a sideshow. The border cannot be a sideshow. The question of immigration is fundamental, because it bears on that fundamental question: what does it mean to be an American? Who gets to be American? Is this a white man's republic — or is America for everyone? Does the Constitution guarantee freedom and due process for all Americans — or do we rip our rights up whenever we get close to the border? We cannot move forward without answering these questions. I would prefer we answer them simply: there is America enough for everyone.

'Wholesale overthrow': Expert furious as Trump lawyer replaces 'American hero' librarian

The Trump administration announced Monday that it was replacing longtime Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden — fired last week for promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion programs — with Donald Trump's former criminal defense lawyer, Todd Blanche.

Blanche is currently second-in-command at the Department of Justice, and will also serve as acting Librarian of Congress, according to Politico. He famously defended Trump in his 2023 "hush money" case in which the then-former president was convicted on 34 felony counts. Trump was sentenced to an "unconditional discharge" with no penalties, fines, or jail time that would interfere with his ability to serve a second term as president.

Blanche also represented Trump in his federal criminal case involving Trump's alleged concealing of classified documents. The case was ultimately dismissed after a motion was filed by special counsel Jack Smith.

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Daniel Schuman, executive director of the American Governance Institute, "a non-profit organization focused on strengthening the institutions of American government," was appalled by the pick, posting to X, "Todd Blanche, the DOJ #2, is now acting Librarian of Congress. This is unconstitutional, illegal, and a wholesale overthrow of Congressional sovereignty."

CBS News's Weijia Jiang reported on the Congressional controversy, posting to X that "two others who Trump named as LOC officials were escorted off the premises because the WH doesn’t have jurisdiction over the legislative branch. Blanche has not tried to report for work there yet."

Politico's Mike DeBonis who posted to X that the Blanche appointment isn't set in stone: "Current LoC chief tells employees that Todd Blanche takeover is not final: 'we have not received direction from Congress about how to move forward.'"

Hayden was nominated to a 10-year term by former President Barack Obama, and was in her ninth year at the world's largest library that houses more than 173 million books, films, and other historically important items. According to her biography, Hayden was the first woman and first African American to lead the library.

Critics were furious when she was fired via a two-sentence email. One called her an "American hero."

X account "DC Boy," who has 26,000 followers, posted, "Todd Blanche, now Deputy Attorney General, replaces the first woman and Black American in the position. Every passing day makes it obvious that the DEI purge has nothing to do with DEI."

Read the Politico article here.

'He's losing!' Lawyer at center of Trump legal fight scoffs as security clearance stripped

Attorney Norm Eisen, who served as White House ethics czar under former President Barack Obama and is at the center of multiple lawsuits challenging Donald Trump, scoffed at the president pulling his security clearance for "the third time" — and chalked it up to retaliation for Trump losing a string of lawsuits since he took office.

CNN's Kate Bolduan introduced Eisen Monday, saying, "The president moved to revoke security clearances of another round of high profile people, including the Biden family, Kamala Harris, the former secretary of state Tony Blinken — and you, Norm. What was your reaction when you heard about this?"

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"Kate, this is the third time that Trump and his people have revoked my security clearance," Eisen said with a laugh. "They announced it several weeks ago, then they announced it again, then they did it on Thursday. You have to wonder, are they — is Trump, like, taking my security clearance away and then turning it back on so he can take it away again?"

Eisen then offered an explanation for Trump's actions.

"The reason he's doing it is because he's losing!" Eisen said. "We filed or helped on more than two dozen lawsuits against Donald Trump at my organization, State Democracy Defenders Fund. We've had a series of big wins protecting 6,000 FBI agents from being targeted by him. Getting 20,000 federal employees who were wrongly fired, rehired. We just got DOGE and Musk declared unconstitutional for the work that they did tearing down USAID. Many, many more things.

"It's petty retaliation. He'll probably take it away a fourth time this week. I couldn't care less. I'm just going to sue him even more."

Watch the clip below via CNN.