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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsTrump Is One Bad Day Away from Tweeting "I've Had Three Times as Many Wives as Obama!"
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/02/trump-obama-obsessionTrump Is One Bad Day Away from Tweeting Ive Had Three Times as Many Wives as Obama!
The presidents obsession with his predecessor continues apace.
by Bess Levin
February 21, 2018 6:06 pm
Something you may have picked up on over the last, oh, seven years, is that Donald Trump is completely obsessed with Barack Obama. Unable to accept the fact that the 44th president is superior to him in every conceivable way, Trump has devoted an inordinate amount of time and energy attempting to prop himself up at his predecessors expense, in every category you can think of, and a lot you cannot because, well, youve got day jobs. His friends have attempted to frame this as a genius marketing tacticFor the president . . . its about comparison to other players, his pal Christopher Ruddy recently told The Washington Post. Whos the guy everybodys going to compare him to? His predecessor. He just gets that intuitively, as a business guy and a bottom-line guy. But to us, the sheer number of instances in which Trump has suggested hes so much better than Obama smacks of something deeper. An incomplete list includes:
The time he said his I.Q. is much higher than Obamas;
The time he said hes been much tougher on Russia than Obama;
The time he said he had better chemistry with Vladimir Putin than Obama;
The time he said there was NO WAY Obama would have beat him a general election;
The time he said he was tougher on guns than Obama;
The time he said that Obama was not a natural dealmaker, unlike you know who;
The time he said his approval rating was so much better than Obamas one year into his presidency;
The time he said he made more progress in the last nine months against ISIS than the Obama Administration . . . made in 8 years;
The time he said that unlike Obama, he wouldnt fail when it came to dealing with Rocket Man;
The time he said that the Conservative Political Action Conference was going to be way more exciting with him as president than it was while Obama was in office.
The time he said hes been much tougher on Russia than Obama;
The time he said he had better chemistry with Vladimir Putin than Obama;
The time he said there was NO WAY Obama would have beat him a general election;
The time he said he was tougher on guns than Obama;
The time he said that Obama was not a natural dealmaker, unlike you know who;
The time he said his approval rating was so much better than Obamas one year into his presidency;
The time he said he made more progress in the last nine months against ISIS than the Obama Administration . . . made in 8 years;
The time he said that unlike Obama, he wouldnt fail when it came to dealing with Rocket Man;
The time he said that the Conservative Political Action Conference was going to be way more exciting with him as president than it was while Obama was in office.
To witness the behavior is to realize that the president of the United States is one bad day away from bragging about his ability to get three women to marry him to Obamas one. So it probably shouldnt come as a surprise that in his first official economic report to Congress, released Wednesday, Trumps pathological Obama obsession was front and center. Writing in the introduction that expanding economic prosperity is among societys most important values and aspirations, Trumps Council of Economic Advisers states that It is the view of this Council that in recent years, the pursuit of alternative-policy aspirations at the expense of growth has imposed real economic costs on the American people, in the form of diminished opportunity, security, equity, and even health. In other words: Obama made you poor, gave you cancer, and sabotaged your chance for a new job with higher pay by using the resources of the N.S.A. to change the font on your résumé from Times New Roman to Wingdings. The council goes on to say that while the American people suffered for eight years under a president hell-bent on economic destruction, they can rest assured that Team Trump will right the ship. We . . . endorse an agenda for returning the American economy to its full growth potential, the intro concludes.
And in case anyone had trouble reading between the lines, Kevin Hassett, Trumps Council of Economic Advisers chair, spelled it out a bit more clearly in an interview with The Wall Street Journal, telling the paper: The stagnation of Americas middle class in the wake of the recession is much worse than believed, and government policy under President Obama should share some of the blame. One explanation for this historical slowdown is that Obamas tax and transfer policies worsened the wound. (To make it seem like this isnt yet another instance of Trump being completely and totally obsessed with Obama, Hassett noted that the report was critical of other administrations, as well, saying trade deals of the last few decades were filled with concessions that relatively feckless negotiators of the past made to our trading partners.)
Evidence that the president spends a good portion of his waking hours preoccupied with Obama aside, economic advisers under 44 were most annoyed by the fact that the actual data exposes the thesis that Obama destroyed economic growth as utter bullshit. Under the previous administration, we went from the worst downturn of our lifetimes to the second longest expansion on record, Austan Goolsbee, C.E.A. chairman from 2010 to 2011 and an economics professor at the University of Chicagos Booth School of Business, told me. The Trump administration inherited an unemployment rate in the 4s and thinks they hit a triple. Alan Krueger, another Obama-era C.E.A. chairman and current Professor of Economics and Public Affairs at Princeton, added: The Trump administration . . . should do their best to maintain the economic expansion that started six months into President Obamas first term. [They] should wake up every morning and thank President Obama for leaving the economy in good shape, without unsustainable bubbles, and with the federal deficit under control.
Somehow, were guessing thats less likely to happen than Trump is to angrily tweet Ive hosted so many more reality-TV shows than Obama! one morning in the not too distant future.
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Trump Is One Bad Day Away from Tweeting "I've Had Three Times as Many Wives as Obama!" (Original Post)
babylonsister
Feb 2018
OP
muntrv
(14,505 posts)1. Please let it happen soon!
bitterross
(4,066 posts)2. Thank you for making me giggle. /nt
Response to babylonsister (Original post)
Name removed Message auto-removed