Trump implies Barack Obama is secretly in charge: The former president is pushing another strange conspiracy theory about his predecessor: That Barack Obama is secretly running the Biden Administration
Donald Trump and Those Ideas
Donald Trump’s political rise was based on a conspiratorial lie about then-President Barack Obama. Throughout the early Obama years, Trump frequently repeated the obvious falsehood that Obama was not born in the United States while demanding that the then-president produce his birth certificate. Eventually, Obama did, after which Trump took credit for getting him to do so.
Now, over a decade and lots of seismic world events later, Trump is pushing another Obama-related conspiracy theory: That Obama is in fact secretly running the Biden Administration.
According to NBC News, Trump had been implying his belief in the Obama-as-puppetmaster theory in recent weeks, before stating it outright in a recent speech.
“It’s never been worse than it is now under crooked Joe Biden and, frankly, his boss, Barack Hussein Obama,” Trump said in a New Hampshire speech this week. “I think it’s his boss.”
“This is obliteration, and Obama has plenty to do with it,” Trump also said in the speech. “Obama has plenty to deal with. I call him, I call him Biden’s boss.”
Biden, of course, was Obama’s vice president for eight years, and the two Democrats have some staff and appointees in common, as is typically the case with presidents of the same party. Unlike most former presidents, Obama continues to live in Washington most of the time, and he has regularly appeared on the campaign trail with Biden and other Democratic candidates.
But there is no real indication that the former president has outsized power in the Biden Administration. But as noticed by MSNBC, conservative media has frequently pushed the line in recent months that Obama is the administration’s true puppet master.
“There are a lot of people who think the Obamas are already running the government and that there is some sort of shadow puppet situation going on that they’re controlling,” Megyn Kelly said in September, while Newt Gingrich has said similar things, as has Fox Business’ Maria Bartiromo.
This ties in with the frequently shared conspiracy theory that Michelle Obama aspires to be president, and that Biden will be “switched out,” at the last minute, and replaced by the former First Lady. Sen. Ted Cruz shared this particular fantasy on a podcast last month.
“In August of 2024, the Democrat kingmakers jettison Joe Biden and parachute in Michelle Obama,” Cruz predicted.
In reality, Michele Obama has been adamant, for her entire time in public life, that she does not want to run for public office herself, while the deadline is just days away for any candidate to get on the ballot for the 2024 campaign in every state.
There is no mechanism in which “Democrat kingmakers” have the power to force out their party’s presidential nominee unless that nominee is okay with doing so. If President Biden, for any reason, can’t serve as the Democratic nominee, he will almost certainly be succeeded by Vice President Harris, and not by Michelle Obama or anyone else.
Washington Post had reported earlier this year that Obama had told Biden in a June White House lunch that he was willing to do “whatever it takes” to help him in 2024 while warning that Trump remains a strong candidate.
“We place a huge emphasis on finding creative ways to reach new audiences, especially tools that can be directly tied to voter mobilization or volunteer activations,” Eric Schultz, a senior adviser to Obama, told the Post at the time. “We are deliberate in picking our moments because our objective is to move the needle.”
“President Biden is grateful for his unwavering support, and looks forward to once again campaigning side-by-side with President Obama to win in 2024 and finish the job for the American people,” campaign spokesman TJ Ducklo told the newspaper.
Author Expertise and Experience:
Stephen Silver is a Senior Editor for 19FortyFive. He is an award-winning journalist, essayist and film critic, who is also a contributor to the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Broad Street Review and Splice Today. The co-founder of the Philadelphia Film Critics Circle, Stephen lives in suburban Philadelphia with his wife and two sons. Stephen has authored thousands of articles over the years that focus on politics, technology, and the economy for over a decade. Follow him on X (formerly Twitter) at @StephenSilver, and subscribe to his Substack newsletter.
