Obama Strikes Back: The PR War Over Treason, Trump, and the Fate of Both Presidencies

This is a war over legacies: Obama versus Trump. But it’s more than that.

This is also a war over personalities and PR strategies.

It didn’t get much media attention, but 11 days ago, President Obama delivered a blunt, hard-hitting message to whiny, sniveling Democrats:

“I think it’s going to require a little bit less navel-gazing and a little less whining and being in fetal positions. And it’s going to require Democrats to just toughen up,” Obama said at the fundraiser, according to excerpts of his remarks exclusively obtained by CNN.

Yeah! Toughen up, you leftwing babies! Quit complaining and get back to work!

Of course, Obama delivered this “hard-hitting message” in a closed-door, off-the-record, private dinner party for super-rich DNC donors.

Obama spoke at a private fundraiser hosted by New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy and his wife, Tammy Murphy, at their home in Red Bank, New Jersey. The intimate dinner drew in $2.5 million through in-person and online donations for the Democratic National Committee, a source familiar with the event said.

And after dinner, Obama was a vapor trail. He returned to his life of leisure, leaving all that difficult, backbreaking labor to everyone else.

It perfectly encapsulated the difference between Presidents 44 and 45/47: Obama is lazy; Trump lives to work. Obama even cited laziness as his worst trait:

President Obama admits his worst trait is that he's a little bit lazy and blames his Aloha State upbringing for his penchant for taking it easy.
"There is a deep down, underneath all the work I do, I think there's a laziness in me," Obama said in his interview with Barbara Walters that airs Friday night on ABC.

That Barbara Walters interview took place in 2011, when Obama was 50 years old and still in his first term. “It’s probably from, you know, growing up in Hawaii, and it’s sunny outside and sitting on the beach,” he explained to Baba Wawa.

Question for the peanut gallery: If he was lazy way back then, how lazy do you think he is today, now that he’s a 60-something ex-politician with a net worth of $70 million?

For the most part, a politician’s PR strategies reflect his or her personality. Donald Trump is a workaholic who loves to “flood the zone,” overwhelming his adversaries via volume. What his detractors dismiss as “distractions,” his MAGA supporters recognize as smart, effective governance. There’s a method to his madness — and a surprising degree of structure within his so-called chaos.

As an aside, you’re a flippin’ idiot if you think chaos alone would transform a New York businessman into a two-term president.

Obama, on the other hand, almost always opts for the PR strategy that requires the least amount of personal work. And we’re seeing that today, with the Obama World response to Tulsi Gabbard’s “treason” allegations.

At five this morning, NBC News dropped a triple-bylined(!) news story, “Tulsi Gabbard’s ‘treason’ allegation triggers a high-wire act from Obama World.” The subtitle reveals the lede:

Former Obama aides say they have to balance unnecessarily giving oxygen to unfounded Trump administration claims and allowing them to balloon unchecked.

So, we’re not gonna see Obama on TV, making the podcast rounds, or doing anything else that might possibly necessitate getting out of bed before noon. Instead, he’s doing the classic Obama Three-Step:

Step One: Release a statement, positioning Obama as totally, 100% above the fray.

Step Two: Insist that everything Trump says is a distraction and/or a lie.

Step Three: Deputize your subordinates to manipulate liberal and/or Never Trump media platforms.

And the “Obama Three-Step” provides context for the next three paragraphs of the NBC News story:

Once Gabbard used the word “treason,” Obama’s team ramped up its messaging, leading Obama's spokesperson to release a carefully worded statement. It denounced Gabbard’s accusations without mentioning Epstein, because it was “below the dignity of the former president,” a former Obama administration official said.
“Out of respect for the office of the presidency, our office does not normally dignify the constant nonsense and misinformation flowing out of this White House with a response,” Obama spokesperson Patrick Rodenbush said in a statement this week. “But these claims are outrageous enough to merit one. These bizarre allegations are ridiculous and a weak attempt at distraction."
Ned Price, who held roles under Obama as a special assistant to the president, a National Security Council senior director and spokesperson and as a CIA senior analyst under Obama and George W. Bush, said he believed it was imperative to reach conservative audiences with a response. On Wednesday, he wrote an opinion piece for Fox News titled: “Americans should beware of Gabbard’s ‘dangerous distraction’ with revisionist history of 2016 election.”

Memo for Conservatives: If you want to know which “right-leaning” media outlets are susceptible to the Obama PR noise machine, take note of the outlets that immediately regurgitated Obama’s talking points. Ned Price, who was quoted in the third paragraph, even admitted that his Fox News op-ed was explicitly tailored for conservative audiences:

“This wasn’t a piece I would have written for any mainstream or left-of-center outlet. This was designed solely and exclusively for Fox News, because that’s where this fire of disinformation is raging,” Price said in an interview. “I thought it was important … to inject facts into that very venue in the hope that at least a few people would read it and be exposed to what actually transpired in 2016.”

Memo for Conservatives, Part II: Get used to the buzzwords “desperation” and “distraction.” We’re gonna hear ‘em a lot, because the Obama PR strategy depends upon it.

It’s a very simple mathematical formula: “Desperation” + “Distraction” = Pivot to Epstein.

So, for all you Epstein conspiracy superfans (you know who you are), congratulations! It’s now an ironclad GUARANTEE that the Epstein story won’t be going away… because, for his PR purposes, Obama now needs it to stay alive.

In fact, the NBC News story opened with this:

To former aides who worked in Barack Obama’s White House, the Trump administration’s allegations of “treason” carried the stench of desperation from a president straining to shift the focus from a burgeoning scandal around Jeffrey Epstein.

This is what’s coming.

Now, at least, we can prepare for it.

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