Trump began sprinkling the term “Obamagate” into his public statements last week after his attorney general decided to drop charges against Trump’s first national security adviser, retired Army Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, who had already twice pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI regarding his phone conversations with Russia’s ambassador after Trump was elected but before he took office.
Trump’s current acting director of national intelligence followed up by releasing a list of officials under then-President Barack Obama who had sought to learn details of those calls, and Trump has now turned that list into an accusation that Obama illegally spied on him.
It requires Americans to believe that Obama is devious enough to have ordered an unfounded prosecution of Flynn to hamstring Trump’s presidency, but not devious enough to have publicized the ongoing FBI probe into the Trump campaign’s links with Russia prior to Election Day 2016.
It also renews attacks Trump began against Obama soon after the U.S. intelligence community revealed in January 2017 that Russian dictator Vladimir Putin had wanted Trump to win the presidency and had ordered Russian intelligence services to help him do so.
Over his first three years in office, Trump has consistently taken credit for Obama’s accomplishments while blaming his predecessor for his own failures.
