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LetMyPeopleVote

(166,920 posts)
Tue Jul 22, 2025, 03:32 PM Jul 22

Maddow Blog-Trump escalates anti-Obama campaign, says he's 'guilty' in treasonous scheme

Just because the Republican’s ridiculous anti-Obama crusade is a distraction doesn’t mean nothing will happen.

Is Trump’s hysterical nonsense about Obama designed to be a distraction from Epstein? Almost certainly, yes.

But the brazen stupidity and unsubtle gaslighting might very well prove to be dangerous and consequential anyway. www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddo...

Steve Benen (@stevebenen.com) 2025-07-22T16:18:52.030Z

https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/ai-video-trumps-radical-campaign-obama-takes-deranged-turn-rcna220231

But as the Republican nears his 200-day mark, he’s starting to focus far less on his immediate Democratic predecessor and much more on his other Democratic predecessor.
https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:4llrhdclvdlmmynkwsmg5tdc/post/3lukunpczmw2o



......All of this was stark raving mad — there is no such "proof" — though Trump has been working his way to this point for a while. Ten days ago, for example, he published an odd missive in which he said Obama was at least partially responsible for “creating” the Jeffrey Epstein files, which was bonkers for a variety of reasons, not the least of which was that former Democratic president had already been out of office for years when the Trump administration investigated, arrested and charged the late millionaire pedophile.....

Between the two absurdities, Trump also amplified a fake video that appears to have been created with AI that depicts Obama being arrested in the Oval Office. The New York Times reported:

The fake video purports to show F.B.I. agents bursting into the meeting, pushing Mr. Obama into a kneeling position and putting him in handcuffs as Mr. Trump looks on smiling, while the song ‘Y.M.C.A.’ by the Village People plays. Later, the fake video shows Mr. Obama in an orange jumpsuit pacing in a cell. The start of the video shows a compilation of actual footage of Democratic leaders, including Mr. Obama and former President Joseph R. Biden Jr., saying, ‘no one is above the law.


This coincided with Trump also promoting fake mugshots of Obama and his team wearing prison jumpsuits.......

It’s worth emphasizing that there’s literally zero evidence of Obama having done anything wrong in connection with Trump’s Epstein and Russia scandals, and the suggestion that the Democratic president would be arrested because of Trump’s controversies is insane, even by 2025 standards.

What’s more, it’s very easy to believe that the incumbent Republican president is peddling this garbage in the hope of creating distractions and shifting blame away from himself.

But if that’s the case, why not just ignore Trump’s obvious absurdities? Because of an unfortunate truth: Just because his anti-Obama crusade is a distraction doesn’t mean nothing will happen. On the contrary, it’s very easy to believe that Trump — who’s already directed the Justice Department to investigate Biden — is moving toward the same step with Obama.


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Ocelot II

(126,284 posts)
1. Trump seems to have conveniently forgotten that SCOTUS made presidents immune
Tue Jul 22, 2025, 03:41 PM
Jul 22

from prosecution - all of them, not just him.

Wiz Imp

(6,252 posts)
2. Right. And besides that, even if Gabbards/Trump's accusations were true (they are not - they're totally made up)
Tue Jul 22, 2025, 05:36 PM
Jul 22

they aren't even accusing him of doing anything that was illegal, let alone treasonous. It's like they said

"let's put out something completely normal and legal that Obama did and said, but let's make up part of it to make it sound scary, then we'll call it treason and the moronic MAGA base will eat it up. Hell, the things we accuse him of don't even have to be illegal, MAGA are so stupid they'll buy anything we tell them. ha. ha. (except about the Epstein files of course!) "

LetMyPeopleVote

(166,920 posts)
3. A spokesperson for Obama pushed back on the Trump administration's claims,
Tue Jul 22, 2025, 08:01 PM
Jul 22

I am glad that President Obama is responding to trump's attempt to distract



https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-accuses-obama-treason-oval-office/story
A spokesperson for Obama pushed back on the Trump administration's claims, saying while they would "not normally dignify the constant nonsense" from the White House with a response, the claims are "outrageous enough to merit one."

"These bizarre allegations are ridiculous and a weak attempt at distraction," the statement said.

Trump's comments come after Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard submitted a criminal referral to the Department of Justice threatening the Obama administration.

Obama's spokesperson said that "nothing in the 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 Intellignce Committee, led by then-Chairman Marco Rubio," the Obama spokesperson said on Tuesday.

LetMyPeopleVote

(166,920 posts)
4. Deadline: Legal Blog-One of the many roadblocks to Trump prosecuting Obama: Presidential immunity
Wed Jul 23, 2025, 08:50 PM
Wednesday

The Supreme Court ruling that benefited Trump would also benefit any other former president prosecuted over their actions in office.

Seems possible - maybe even likely - that Trump thought presidential immunity was only for him.

As usual, he was a long ways from correct.

One of the many roadblocks to Trump prosecuting Obama: presidential immunity www.msnbc.com/deadline-whi...

@jimrissmiller.bsky.social 2025-07-23T17:18:57.827Z

https://www.msnbc.com/deadline-white-house/deadline-legal-blog/trump-obama-treason-presidential-immunity-rcna220479

With President Donald Trump accusing former President Barack Obama of treason, it’s worth recalling the Supreme Court immunity ruling in Trump’s favor that would apply to the prosecution of any former president over their actions in office.

Trump v. United States wouldn’t be the only roadblock to the Trump Justice Department prosecuting the Democrat — indeed, it’s unclear what a criminal case against him would be. Trump’s allegations came as his director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, claimed that Obama and his national security Cabinet members “manufactured and politicized intelligence to lay the groundwork for what was essentially a years-long coup against President Trump” after Trump won the 2016 election. Gabbard said she’s making a “criminal referral” to the DOJ.

An Obama spokesperson said the former president’s office “does not normally dignify the constant nonsense and misinformation flowing out of this White House with a response,” but added that “these claims are outrageous enough to merit one. These bizarre allegations are ridiculous and a weak attempt at distraction.”....

But if the Trump DOJ charges Obama — again, it’s unclear what statutes the DOJ would use or what the theory of the case would be — among the things Obama’s counsel could point to is the immunity ruling.

And while Chief Justice John Roberts’ opinion didn’t fully flesh out how broadly presidential immunity applies, an important procedural aspect of the ruling is that it emphasized that former presidents are entitled to pretrial immunity appeals. That would be valuable to Obama in this hypothetical scenario, because he could raise the immunity issue at the outset and potentially end the case before it got going.
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