Barack Obama is still living rent-free in Donald Trump's weird, empty head

Former President Barack Obama lives rent-free in Donald Trump's head. It is a modest flat, nothing special. The tall ceilings are a plus; the constant shrieking of unseen voices, a minus.

Obama tweeted a commemorative moment on Monday morning, noting the 11th anniversary of the Recovery Act, the federal government's response to the near-collapse of the world financial markets and subsequent Great Recession. This made the landlord, current president Aggrieved Hate Pumpkin, extremely upset.

"President Obama is now trying to take credit for the Economic Boom taking place under the Trump Administration," Dear Leader hate-tweeted. "He had the WEAKEST recovery since the Great Depression, despite Zero Fed Rate & MASSIVE quantitative easing. NOW, best jobs numbers [...] ever. Had to rebuild our military, which was totally depleted. Fed Rate UP, taxes and regulations WAY DOWN. If Dems won in 2016, the USA would be in big economic (Depression?) & military trouble right now. THE BEST IS YET TO COME. KEEP AMERICA GREAT!"

Ahem. Just as reminder, Donald Trump appears to honestly believe, based on past statements, that the United States military was "out of bullets" before he, Dear Leader, arrived. (He also believes stealth planes are literally invisible, it seems.) And, just as a reminder, we now have a United States president who screams declarations in ALL CAPS like your average over-excitable internet troll, which is a hell of a thing all on its own, if we're going to be honest.

But Donald Trump just cannot tolerate Barack Obama. Obama is more popular. He's clearly smarter. Obama does not look like a circus-clown version of what a poor person might think a "billionaire" might look like, which is worth several bonus points at least. He was unambiguously successful in turning around a cratered economy, and likely would have been more successful had Republicans not intentionally stonewalled the recovery by shorting expert-recommended funding and, as usual, suddenly re-re-rediscovering deficits after eight years of giddy Republican neglect.

Anyhoo, this all quickly played out as it always plays out, every time, after a Trump tweet. Wags jumped in to point out that Trump was both lying about what Obama said and, of course, about his own economic record. Job growth was greater under Obama; Under Trump, it has slowed. Economic growth was much greater during Obama's time than under Trump. Trump campaign bleaters bleated out their bleats while Republican lawmakers praised Dear Leader's bold Dear Leadering.

And the world moved on to the next crisis, as Trump followed up on his claims of bold economic success by ... pardoning a raft of the most famous corrupt public and private figures of the last four decades, mostly focused on money launderers, fraud-doers and people who used their public office for private gain. Go figure.

This tiny, small thing of Trump obsessing constantly over comparing himself to Barack Obama would have taken up a hundred hours of "news" analysis, were we not in the Trump era, a time when mere scandals caused by a president being publicly icky are all but ignored in swarms of scandals caused by a president doing and assisting in openly criminal things. It is, however, what makes the man tick. Go through his Twitter feed; nearly every single tweet and retweet is either:

1) somebody praising him and his "leadership" in glowing, North Korea-styled terms.

2) an unending list of attacks on his enemies, defined as anyone, anywhere, who has gotten in the way of people praising him and his supposed genius.

Still not normal. Still weird, in fact. And Barack Obama still has a vacation home in this guy's loud but empty head.

from Daily Kos https://ift.tt/2SDNA3f