‘Obamagate’ Is Just Trump’s Latest Effort at Distraction

Every distraction distracts from another distraction, which in turn, distracts from yet another. It’s distractions, all the way down.

President Donald Trump’s latest obsession involves what he and the far right have termed “Obamagate”—or, as Trump often styles it in his tweets, “OBAMAGATE!” The core of the conspiracy theory comprises dramatic and terrible wrongdoing by Trump’s predecessor in office. That wrongdoing somehow includes illegal surveillance, malicious prosecution, coup plotting, and treason, and it invariably involves a lot of superlatives and exclamation points—though precisely what Barack Obama is supposed to have done remains unclear. Asked by a reporter what exactly he was accusing Obama of, Trump : “It’s been going on for a very long time … You know what the crime is. The crime is very obvious to everybody.” On May it to be “the greatest political scandal in the history of the United States.”