There was just one moment in the appalling White House attempt to besmirch the reputations of a former president and a first lady that rang true.
Tulsi Gabbard, President Donald Trump’s director of national intelligence, and Karoline Leavitt, his press secretary, spoke proudly of the administration’s transparency.
It is certainly that. Its motives are as transparent as Marco Rubio’s hairpiece.
There is only one motive in rehashing tired reports to offer up Barack Obama as fresh meat to the MAGA mob: It was a blatant attempt to deflect the relentless media appetite for revelations about the president’s relationship with Jeffrey Epstein.
The drumbeat of stories about the abhorrent behavior of the rich and shameless. Royals and billionaires and maybe even a president. The smell of blood was in the water, so Trump threw in a body.
Joseph Stalin would have been proud. The murderous Soviet dictator sent an acolyte to Mexico to bludgeon rival Leon Trotsky to death with an axe in 1925.
On Wednesday, Trump sent two White House assassins to stab America’s 44th president in the back.
There is no other conceivable reason why the Trump administration would conjure up a slew of documents that had been collecting dust since 2017 and 2020 in an attempt to stir up a debate that nobody cares about anymore. The “biggest scandal” in history? It’s not even the biggest scandal this week.
Irony is not a currency many in Trump’s White House would understand. But Gabbard is a politician who has tried and largely failed over the last decade to shake off concerns that she is a Russian apologist. She has called Volodymyr Zelensky’s Ukrainian government a “corrupt autocracy” and expressed sympathy for Russia. She praised former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden as a “brave whistleblower” after he leaked secrets and fled to Moscow in 2013. She also angered lawmakers by traveling to Syria to meet Russian ally and murderous dictator Bashar Assad in 2017.
For Gabbard to accuse Obama of manipulating claims that Russia meddled in the 2016 election for his own ends is laughable.
For her to accuse a former U.S. president of treason is abhorrent.
Her monotone, tone deaf tirade against Obama and cruel assertions against Hillary Clinton were really meant for an audience of one: Trump was watching from the other room.
The president has tired of using the unfortunate Joe Biden as his punching bag. Even for a man with the sensitivity of a stormtrooper, Trump draws the line at cancer.
So, he went from the 46th president to the 44th and used his very own Cruella de Vil to do his dirty work. He’s called her the “hottest” member of his team, though he doesn’t rate her capabilities as highly. Just last month, Trump said Gabbard had gotten it all wrong over Iran’s nuclear options. He probably even enjoyed making her sweat.
As for Leavitt, she is so drunk on Trump Kool-Aid that she is showing real anger at media outlets who dare to ask a question, let alone question her. It’s Kremlin 101. Intimidate the media. Stifle opposition. And then, one day, there won’t be any questions at all. Leavitt’s no puppy. She’s Trump’s attack dog.
“The evidence that we have found and that we have released directly point to President Obama leading the manufacturing of this intelligence assessment,” Gabbard said after hijacking Leavitt’s weekly Wednesday press briefing. “There are multiple pieces of evidence and intelligence that confirm that fact,” she added.
No, there’s not.
One document Gabbard referenced was compiled by House Intelligence Committee staff overseen by Chairman Devin Nunes. That’s the same Devin Nunes who is now chair of the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board and CEO of the Trump Media & Technology Group. He was also awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Trump in 2021. No conflict of interest there, then.
It was originally drafted in 2017, at a time when Republicans controlled the committee. Do you think they were going to side with the Democrats?
Another was the bipartisan 2020 report on allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 election by the Senate Intelligence Committee, chaired by Rubio, now Trump’s Secretary of State, among other jobs.
There is nothing in them that wasn’t already known. Yes, there was Russian interference. Yes, it targeted Clinton, and maybe Vladimir Putin did prefer Trump, but he thought Hillary would win. There’s no suggestion the Russians hacked any votes. There is certainly no evidence of Obama behaving like a Machiavellian mobster.
Nobody in the White House briefing room was fooled by the charade. The race to the bottom has gathered pace. Smoke and mirrors have become the norm. Diversion and deception instead of honest answers.
As with every autocracy, truth is the victim.
Gabbard left with a tight smile. Leavitt swerved a few more questions with a scornful glance at her nemesis, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins.
And then we all went back to asking why Donald Trump won’t come clean about Jeffrey Epstein.
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