Op-Ed: Donald Trump Is Republicans’ Barack Obama, And That Says A Lot About The GOP And MAGA America

Supporters react as Fox News projects Republican presidential nominee, former President Donald Trump is elected president during an election night event at the Palm Beach Convention Center on November 6, 2024, in West Palm Beach, Florida. | Source: Chip Somodevilla / Getty

In September of last year, just under a year before we found out to much of our dismay that Donald Trump would, once again, be getting his crust-orange tan shavings all over the Oval Office furniture, Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk proudly declared that the only reason Trump was ever a thing in the first place is that Republicans “want a white Obama.”

“The Obama movement was larger than life,” Kirk explained. “They rode this idea of candidate enthusiasm and this idea of hope and change and all of that. But you live by the sword, you die by the sword. And Obama got reelected in 2012, but then Republican voters said, ‘Our turn. We want a white Obama.’”

To be sure, Kirk was speaking from the same place of not-so-thinly veiled racism and deep Caucasian resentment that he spoke from when he said he would be nervous if he saw a Black pilot because he would assume they were a DEI hire, or when he complained about Black women in politics and law being DEI hires despite their extensive resumes and educational credentials, or when he disparaged Martin Luther King Jr. and the Exonerated Five, or when he suggested that “Black America” prefers “gangbanging” to supporting Trump — but that doesn’t mean he didn’t have a point.

As I wrote previously, when I first heard that this little-known Black senator from Chicago who has a foreign-sounding name that is far too similar to “Osama” would be running for president, I thought: “There’s just no way.” But then former President Barack Obama swiftly became a phenomenon. He quickly grew massively popular; adored, and, at times, even deified by his supporters. For most voters, he was a charismatic instant celebrity of a president.

On the other hand, conservatives hated this man for every second of every day of his two-term presidency, and they never let him forget it even for a millisecond. White conservatives grew angry at the very sight of Obama and the sound of his voice. Obama spent eight years defending his legitimacy as president. The birther movement, which Trump was a leading advocate for, compelled Obama to show two forms of his birth certificate just to prove he was president after being elected president. For eight years, Obama had to convince half of America that he was a Christian, not a Muslim, not that there’s anything wrong with being Muslim if you’re not a bigoted Islamaphobe.

Hell, when Obama was first sworn into office, Republicans like then-Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and former Vice President Dick Cheney declared that it would be the GOP’s top priority to make him a “one-term president.” There was none of that “end the divisiveness” and “America needs to come together” talk. Obama and those who voted for him were the enemy and that was that.

The hatred half of America had for Obama was palpable — almost tangible. Now, with Trump, the proverbial shoe is on the other foot. But there are obvious differences that say a lot about white conservatives and the Republican party.

First of all, when it comes right down to it, Obama was never the radical leftist president Republicans purported him to be. For eight years, Republicans tried to paint Obama as this gun-grabbing, socialist Muslim extremist who loved immigrants, hated white people and hated America. As it turned out, Obama never even proposed any policies that would allow for the confiscation of anyone’s guns. There was a record number of deportations under Obama’s watch. None of his so-called “socialist” policies ever amounted to the redistribution of wealth as Republicans suggested. Truthfully, the only thing that separated Obama from your average Democratic president was the color of his skin and the origins of his name. The nature of the attacks on him made that evident.

Donald Trump is also a phenomenon who is adored and often deified by his supporters. And he is hated by all who oppose him. That hatred is palpable — almost tangible.

So, what sets Trump apart from your average president, Republican or Democrat? It’s not his race — that he has in common with every president except the aforementioned. 

One glaring thing that sets Trump apart is that he is not held to any standard of presidential decorum. Obama (and Kamala Harris for that matter) could never have gotten away with being as boorish, childish, ignorant, inarticulate and cartoonishly absurd as Trump. Obama would never have been elected if there were a recording of him bragging about grabbing random women by their genitals, or if he responded to a female journalist’s tough line of questioning by publicly referencing her menstrual cycle. Obama couldn’t even wear a tan suit without drawing the ire of white conservative America; imagine if he ever cut his rally short and stood on stage swaying offbeat to music for 40 minutes.

Trump haters don’t hate Trump because of his race — we hate him because of the content of his character.

We hate him because he is openly bigoted. We hate him because he is a bully who only knows how to respond to his opponents by berating them. We hate him because he is a compulsive liar who doesn’t seem to catch a whiff of his own irony when he shouts “fake news” at every report he doesn’t like. We hate him because he is a serial propagandist who tried to upend democracy in 2020 by spreading election fraud misinformation without a shred of evidence to support it. Black people hate him because he’s demonstrably racist and because of how condescending he is to us while purporting to be our orangey-white savior.

Charlie Kirk was mostly right when he said Trump is white people’s Obama, but it might be more accurate to say he is Republican’s Obama — and that says a lot about the Party and about MAGA America. 

A whole lot.

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