It seems like when anything goes wrong in America these days, former President Barack Obama becomes the scapegoat for Donald Trump and the GOP. When Obama recently criticized the Trump administration’s handling of the covid-9 crisis, Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell said Obama should have kept his mouth shut. Now citizens and celebrities are speaking out against McConnell.
It all escalated on the evening of May 11 when Sen. McConnell slammed Obama for what the Senate majority leader said was breaking tradition of not criticizing the sitting president.
“I think President Obama should have kept his mouth shut,” McConnell said in an interview with Trump 2020 senior adviser Lara Trump on a YouTube episode of “Team Trump Online!”
“You know, we know he doesn’t like much (of what this) administration is doing, that’s understandable,” McConnell added. “But I think it’s a little bit classless, frankly, to critique an administration that comes after you. You had your shot, you were there for eight years.”
McConnell added, “Generally former presidents just don’t do that,” adding that it went against the tradition set by the Bushes of not criticizing their successors.
Days earlier, during a phone call with thousands of alumni of his administration, Obama said the Trump administration’s response to the coronavirus is an “absolute chaotic disaster,” NBC News reported.
McConnell also blamed Obama for Trump’s slow response to the pandemic, saying the Obama administration “did not leave to this administration any kind of game plan for something like this.”
Not true, said former Obama administration officials. They say Obama left a 69-page playbook for the incoming Trump administration with plans for handling a pandemic.
“The maddening thing is Obama left them a WH office for pandemics, a literal playbook, a cabinet-level exercise, and a global infrastructure to deal with ‘something like this,'” tweeted former Obama adviser Ben Rhodes in response to McConnell’s comment.
McConnell’s blame game has rubbed many people the wrong way.
Listen to GHOGH with Jamarlin Martin | Episode 70: Jamarlin Martin Jamarlin goes solo to discuss the COVID-19 crisis. He talks about the failed leadership of Trump, Andrew Cuomo, CDC Director Robert Redfield, Surgeon General Jerome Adams, and New York Mayor de Blasio.
Late-night talk show host Jimmy Kimmell weighed in on the McConnell calling Obama “classless,” The Daily Beast reported.
Kimmel seemed more than frustrated at Trump’s latest distraction — “Obamagate.”
“He doesn’t know what Obamagate is but he’s going with it,” Kimmel said. “He’s very mad because Obama said the government’s response to the virus has been a ‘chaotic disaster.’ And in an interview with Trump’s daughter-in-law, Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, pretended to be mad too.”
After showing the video clip of McConnell calling Obama “classless” for speaking out against Trump, Kimmel replied, “Wait, Obama is classless? He’s joking now, right? I mean, of all the wildly hypocritical things anyone has said about anything during this ordeal, the idea that Obama is classless and shouldn’t say bad things about another president, that might take the cake!”
“The tonnage of terrible things Trump has said about Obama, I would put them all on screen, but no one in the world has a big-enough screen to see all of them,” Kimmel continued. “The screen over the field where the Dallas Cowboys play isn’t big enough for all of them. So he had to be kidding. Mitch, you dirty little snapping turtle, you got us again!”
