Obama Nails GOP — You Created The Monster, Donald Trump Just Branded It

Sign up for daily news updates from CleanTechnica on email. Or follow us on Google News!

obama-talkingObama has long been excellent with words, but his comments seem to be getting more potent and more to the point as his second term draws to a close. He’s being blunt with the US public, and he’s finally highlighting very strongly how absurd the “Grand Old Party” (GOP) has been acting since he became president.

In a talk last night, after highlighting some of the insane conspiracy theories some Republican leaders have been pushing since our first black president was elected, he said, “They stood by while this happened, and Donald Trump as he’s prone to do, he didn’t build the building himself — he just slapped his name on it and took credit for it.”

Donald Trump’s presidential campaign is nearly in the dust bin of history — well, one of our filthiest, nastiest, rudest, most sexist, most racist, and most conspiracy-laden dust bins — and several Republicans running for Congress have finally decided to abandon him. But the attempts at political gaming are about as absurd as Donald’s hugely unprofessional run for office. These people stood by after countless horrible statements, and knowing very well who Donald Trump is, and they supported him until it seemed his presidential efforts were doomed and he might take their reelection chances down with him.

This was cowardly, harmful for our country (and the world as a whole), and simply another sign of how poorly these people represent the country’s ideals.

“You can’t wait until that finally happens and then say that’s too much and think that somehow you are showing any kind of leadership and deserve to be elected to the United States Senate,” Obama said. “You don’t get points for that.”

Referencing an absurd conspiracy Texas Governor Greg Abbott apparently either bought into or tried to further hype (the idea that Obama was going to try to take over the government), Obama said, “They took it seriously. This is in the swamp of crazy that has been fed over and over and over and over again.”

On June 13, a day before Donald Trump’s birthday, I asked if the USA was ready to elect a conspiracy theorist as president. But the thing is, as Obama pointed out, US voters have elected dozens or hundreds of hardcore conspiracy theorists to Congress, Republicans who have been convinced or convinced others that Obama isn’t American, Obama is a communist, Obama is a Muslim — and one who sympathizes with ISIS(!), Obama is aiding ISIS, Obama hates America and wants to destroy it — and that is just the beginning of topics regarding Obama, not to mention so many other topics!

It’s not even controversial any more that the Republican Party has made opposing climate action one of its cardinal rules, with almost all Republicans in Congress unwilling to admit that humans are causing rapid and extremely harmful global warming that puts our society at risk. If a Republican acknowledges the scientific consensus and lines herself or himself up with the voting public on the topic, she or he is basically guaranteed to face a heavily funded contender brought in by Republican “leadership” in the next primary campaign. A few Republican climate hawks lost their seats in Congress in that way.

Back to Obama and his speech last night, he then highlighted the obvious: Donald Trump has actually said numerous absurd things on the campaign trail that should have resulted in other Republicans disavowing him, but they didn’t do so … until a horrible debate performance, an embarrassing following week, and a leaked audio recording that all but crushed Donald’s chances at winning the election. Then, because it was politically useful for them to do so, a handful of these Republican Congresspeople spoke up. But they didn’t do so much earlier when Donald said horrible things, dangerous things.

But it’s not even about Donald, his proposed ban on Muslims, his proposed wall between the US and Mexico that Mexico is going to pay for, the fact that he categorically called Mexicans rapists and criminals, his attempt to bully a judge off of his Trump University case because his parents were born in Mexico (he was born in Indiana) and must therefore be biased against Trump, his constant name-calling (“Little Marco,” “Crazy Bernie,” “Pocahontas”), his indecent reference to a Fox News anchor’s menstrual cycle (a Fox News anchor!), his claim that global warming is a Chinese hoax, his praise of ruthless dictators and mass murderers, and so on, and so on. It’s not even about that. What it’s about is that the conspiracy-loving Republican leadership actually created the caustic castle for Trump to walk into and slightly rebrand. As Obama said, he basically just adopted what their approach has been and put his name on it.

Not long after Obama took office, the top-ranking Republican in Congress admitted that his #1 priority was to make Obama a one-term president. No, it wasn’t to help get the country out of a severe recession. No, it wasn’t to serve the nation in order to improve its economy and quality of life as much as possible. It was actually in essence the opposite of that. The Republican leader’s #1 objective was to make Obama a one-term president. How could Republicans achieve that? By doing their best to not help the US economy improve, and by doing their best to spread absurd conspiracy theories about Obama. They launched this political approach, and now they act surprised when Trump adopts it, turns the volume up one notch, and turns the daggers toward his own opponents in the GOP as well?

A recording from a decade ago isn’t what led several top Republican candidates to pull their for Trump. His free-falling poll numbers are what did so, because then it became a political positive for them to disassociate from him. Honestly, it’s just more of what they’ve been doing for a decade or more — make decisions based on selfish motives rather than on what’s good for the country.

But the problem isn’t even that they are acting on selfish motives. The problem is that their approach to politics has been to spread hate, spread fear, spread counterproductive conspiracies, divide the country, demonize Democrats (including Hillary Clinton, a Republican target for smear campaigns for decades), and — when necessary — make the US economy and the country’s quality of life worse in order to win the next election.

I plan to come back to several of the conspiracy theories Republican “leaders” have pumped into the mainstream media and political discussions in the coming days, so stay check back in soon if you want to see more evidence, and feel free to drop some of your “favorite” absurdities and Republican conspiracy theories down in the comments as well.

Related: “Origins Of The Republican Party’s Implosion (Or Explosion)


Have a tip for CleanTechnica? Want to advertise? Want to suggest a guest for our CleanTech Talk podcast? Contact us here.

Latest CleanTechnica TV Video


Advertisement
 
CleanTechnica uses affiliate links. See our policy here.

Zachary Shahan

Zach is tryin' to help society help itself one word at a time. He spends most of his time here on CleanTechnica as its director, chief editor, and CEO. Zach is recognized globally as an electric vehicle, solar energy, and energy storage expert. He has presented about cleantech at conferences in India, the UAE, Ukraine, Poland, Germany, the Netherlands, the USA, Canada, and Curaçao. Zach has long-term investments in Tesla [TSLA], NIO [NIO], Xpeng [XPEV], Ford [F], ChargePoint [CHPT], Amazon [AMZN], Piedmont Lithium [PLL], Lithium Americas [LAC], Albemarle Corporation [ALB], Nouveau Monde Graphite [NMGRF], Talon Metals [TLOFF], Arclight Clean Transition Corp [ACTC], and Starbucks [SBUX]. But he does not offer (explicitly or implicitly) investment advice of any sort.

Zachary Shahan has 7324 posts and counting. See all posts by Zachary Shahan