Trump is Haunted by Barack Obama
This is why he can't resolve the Iran war.
Donald Trump is haunted by a specter. It pursues him, exposes him, mocks him. It’s why he started the Iran war, and why he can’t finish it.
That specter is Barack Obama.
Unfortunately, the two will be tied forever in history. It was Obama’s teasing at the 2011 White House Correspondents Dinner, with the audience laughing heartily while Trump sat grimly in silence, that sat like a burning coal in Trump’s gut, eventually leading him to run for president as much as an act of revenge as anything else.
And it was Obama’s presidency — not anything he did, mind you, just the fact of a Black man in the White House — that created the racial backlash that made it possible for Trump to win. In office, Trump has tried to undo everything associated with Obama, and it’s that impulse that brought us this war.
For Trump, this is intensely personal. You can tell how jealous and insecure Obama makes him, for in so many ways, Obama is what Trump wishes he could be. Every day when he looks in the mirror to apply his makeup, Trump sees the wrinkled face of a fat old man who might once have been good looking, but hasn’t been for a long time. Obama is (relatively) young and thin and handsome. All of Trump’s boasting is desperate and sad; Obama has a self-assurance that doesn’t need to shout. Obama is legitimately well-educated and smart; Trump feels horribly insecure around those with advanced degrees (the tell that he’s feeling that way is when he brings up his uncle who taught at MIT). Foreign leaders admired Obama yet have nothing but contempt for Trump; the same is true of the cultural elite whose approval Trump craves. The former president hangs with acclaimed artists and thinkers; Trump has to content himself with Kid Rock.
Whatever you thought of his presidency — and it had plenty of shortcomings — Obama has a coolness Trump knows he could never approach. He’s sleek and confident where Trump is garish and overcompensating. Trump brings up Joe Biden more often in conversation, because he can call Biden weak and old, but Obama hovers in the background, a sly smile on his face, always mocking Trump and his failures.
Trump’s reaction to Obama’s Iran deal is why we’re here
Trump’s insecurity where Obama is concerned is what led directly to the Iran War, and it’s why he can’t find a way out. Everything about how Trump has approached Iran in both his terms was in reaction to Obama, especially the nuclear deal completed near the end of his second term. Given where we are now, Trump’s trashing of that deal has to be considered one of the most extraordinary foreign policy screwups of the 21st century.
The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) was the product of lengthy negotiation that included the U.S., Russia, China, France, Germany, and the U.K. It was finalized in 2015, and created a monitoring system to prevent Iran from enriching uranium beyond what could be used for civilian purposes. In exchange, Iran got sanctions relief and the return of some of its funds that had been frozen in western banks after the 1979 revolution.
From the outset, Republicans complained that the deal wasn’t harsh enough on Iran. But it worked. It didn’t solve every problem having to do with Iran (including its support for proxy groups that carried out acts of terrorism), but it did solve the nuclear problem, at least while it was in effect.
Which is why Trump’s national security team in his first term begged him not to withdraw from the agreement. But he didn’t listen; the deal had Obama’s name on it, and he couldn’t tolerate that. So in 2018 he abandoned it, insisting that because he was such a great dealmaker, Iran would come crawling back and give him anything he asked for. “They are going to want to make a new and lasting deal,” he said. But there was no plan, no strategy, no path to a new agreement. Inevitably, Iran resumed its efforts to put itself in a position to build nuclear weapons.
It was a mistake of monumental proportions, undertaken for the pettiest reasons and topped only by the war that it produced. Because Trump couldn’t stand to see Obama’s agreement remain intact, he killed it and put himself on the road to this idiotic war. And now he can’t end that war, because he’s still looking over his shoulder at Obama.
Here’s what Trump posted over the weekend:
At the moment, it looks like what the administration is negotiating is not “THE EXACT OPPOSITE, in fact!” but something that could look a lot like the original JCPOA. Iran will get sanctions relief and the release of its frozen funds, and in exchange, something or other will happen with its existing nuclear material and its ability to enrich uranium in the future (there’s disagreement on what that will look like). Only now, Iran will be able to demand more concessions for opening the Strait of Hormuz — in other words, returning to the status quo before Trump launched the war. The Iranian regime is in a far stronger position than it was before the war.
Then on Monday, Trump posted this:
It’s a reference to $1.7 billion in Iranian funds that were unfrozen as part of the deal (and were actually delivered in cash, because sanctions had cut Iran off from the international banking system). But, we should note, the Trump administration will almost inevitably be unfreezing more Iranian funds if and when they come to an agreement to end the war — and this time, it could be as much as $20 billion. And “Trump’s Iran policy” is a battleship sitting in the ocean shooting down drones, which is not exactly a picture of success.
But the point is this: As he makes decisions about Iran, Trump is still haunted by Obama. He can’t stop talking about him. I can promise you that whenever this war ends, whether with a signed agreement or Trump just declaring victory and going home, he will say that what he got was much better than Obama’s deal, because he’s so much smarter and stronger. He’ll say it, but he’ll know it isn’t true.
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Somewhere deep down in his fetid, rotting soul, trump knows he will never measure up to Obama. Trump has been an epic loser his entire life. He knows it and it eats at him constantly. He compensates by denigrating those who have achieved so much through their smarts and hard work because that's what losers do. If he hadn't been born into wealth trump would have been flipping burgers or digging ditches his entire, miserable life. Obama is everything that trump can never and will never be. And the fact that Obama is black just turbocharges the torment.
Our Liar-in-Chief started off his diatribe about JCPOA with a lie - of course. He claims that Obama's negotiating team consisted of "rank amateurs." Obama's negotiating team consisted of nuclear scientists, nuclear arms specialists and experienced State Department negotiators. By comparison, Trump's negotiating team looks like the "rankest of amateurs." Trump, of course, understands nothing, except his hatred of Obama.