Trump tweeted today, “OBAMAGATE,” and Obama replied, “Vote.” Why does this matter?
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Obamagate first:
Obamagate refers to President Trump’s unsupported allegations that senior members of his administration and former President Barack Obama conspired to entrap Michael Flynn in order to prevent him from winning the election and then to destroy him thereafter.
It is really a continuation of the same rhetoric that Trump has been using from the beginning of his administration. The incredibly condensed version is that Trump claims Obama improperly opened three investigations against Michael Flynn because of his connections to the Trump campaign, alleging Joe Biden’s cooperation.
One of the main tenets of the argument is that because of Flynn’s involvement with the Trump campaign, his name in investigation reports was purposefully revealed after being first classified and then declassified at the request of authorized national security authorities.
The fact of the matter is that such unmasking occurs often during federal investigations. The Trump administration only raised it in this case because the officials who sought the unmasking are people he views as political foes (chiefly James Clapper, John Brennen, and James Comey).
Using this material, Trump has demanded that Obama go before the Senate Judiciary Committee to provide a straight testimony about what he knew about the matter. Senator Lindsey Graham has asked officials of the Trump administration to testify about the beginnings of the Trump-Russia inquiry that resulted in the unmasking of Flynn, and he has categorically stated that he has no intention of summoning Obama to testify.
“Vote”
There is just one inference in this one-word tweet. Obama is urging Americans to remove Trump (as well as his political backers) from office. Democrats have repeatedly asserted that the conspiracy theory as a whole is a smokescreen designed to obscure Trump’s political gaffes, including the accusations that his campaign sought Russian interference in the 2016 election, which resulted in his impeachment, and the harsh criticism of his inaction to protect Americans from Covid-19.
Obama has called on supporters on all sides of the issue to use their votes to determine the public’s final verdict. In the end, what matters most in this circumstance is the opinion of Americans.
