This is pretty funny considering what actually happened in the 2016 presidential election. Former president Barack Obama put together a plan to legitimize the election if Donald Trump lost and wouldn’t accept the results. As it turns out he should have had a plan in case Hillary Clinton lost and wouldn’t accept the results because that’s what she’s been doing ever since Trump curb-stomped her two years ago. Like all Obama plans, this one was misdirected, ill-conceived, and based on lies.
New York Magazine brings the hilarity:
In October 2016, senior staff in the Obama White House discussed what they should do if Hillary Clinton won the November election and Donald Trump refused to accept the result as legitimate. They had cause to be worried. At that time, Trump had openly speculated that the election might be “rigged.” During his final debate with Clinton on October 19, he said that his opponent “should never have been allowed to run” and declined to answer the question of whether he would concede. “I’ll keep you in suspense,” the Republican nominee said.
“It wasn’t a hypothetical,” said Obama’s senior aide and speechwriter Ben Rhodes.
Well actually, yes, it was hypothetical because the election hadn’t happened yet. They were preparing for something that might happen, not responding to something that did happen.
And what exactly was this plan, you ask. It was pretty much the same thing they did after Trump won by trying to delegitimize him with the Russian collusion nonsense:
The Obama White House plan, according to interviews with Rhodes and Jen Psaki, Obama’s communications director, called for congressional Republicans, former presidents, and former Cabinet-level officials including Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice, to try and forestall a political crisis by validating the election result. In the event that Trump tried to dispute a Clinton victory, they would affirm the result as well as the conclusions reached by the U.S. intelligence community that Russian interference in the election sought to favor Trump, and not Clinton. Some Republicans were already aware of Russian interference from intelligence briefings given to leaders from both parties during the chaotic months before the election. “We wanted to handle the Russia information in a way that was as bipartisan as possible,” Rhodes said.
Since Trump actually won the election and ruined Obama’s big plan, they decided to roll it over in an attempt to derail his presidency. They took all of that Russia bullshit and used it as a way to get Trump out of the White House. The plan shifted from legitimizing the election results to delegitimizing Trump.
As Rhodes and Psaki explain, they are now trying to get Trump impeached:
Not that the question is entirely a retrospective one. Psaki also said she had doubts that Trump would go quietly if he were to be impeached. “I don’t think there is any indication to suggest that if that’s where things headed, he would accept it,” she said. “He’s laying the groundwork for delegitimizing the process now — questioning our institutions, attacking their leadership. This is all fodder for his supporters to work with in the event that things go down a dark path for him.”
Rhodes said he didn’t know how Trump would respond to impeachment. “It’s a really interesting question,” he said. “At a minimum, he could choose to implore his supporters not to accept the result. Given that 30 to 35 percent of the country believes whatever he says, and his enormous public megaphone, you could foresee a scenario where that would lead to a fairly worrisome political situation.”
This article moves seemly from Obama’s plan in case Trump wouldn’t concede to Senior Obama officials talking about impeaching the President. This is an admission that Obama’s plan always had a contingency in case Trump won so that they could try to destroy his presidency. Considering everything that is going on with Robert Mueller’s “Russian collusion” witch hunt, I think it’s safe to say Obama is working hard to get rid of Trump. It sounds devious and underhanded, but at least lazy-ass Obama is finally working hard at something.
