It’s All Fun and Games Until Trump Has Obama Arrested
Then it’s authoritarianism.
I would never have guessed that the Village People’s “YMCA” would be the soundtrack for America’s descent into authoritarianism. Yet it was that upbeat disco anthem that played over a bizarre AI-generated video, which Donald Trump shared on Truth Social over the weekend, showing the president having his predecessor, Barack Obama, thrown in jail by FBI agents.
You could say that the tonal dissonance between the music choice and the video’s subject suggests that Trump isn’t serious. That it’s just a crass joke. At risk of sounding humorless, I’d wager that this all stops being funny when it comes from the most powerful man on the planet.
The same day that Trump posted the aforementioned video, he also shared some more disturbing AI slop; this one a series of mugshots of Obama administration officials. It’s hard to argue that it’s all a bit when two of the people in the picture—former FBI Director James Comey and former CIA Director John Brennan—are the subject of real, politicized investigations. In comedy, timing is everything, and this feels especially unfunny coming just days after the Department of Justice launched those probes. (Those won’t be the last inquiries, either; Tulsi Gabbard has threatened criminal referral for Obama officials over contemporary US intelligence analysis of Russian interference in the 2016 election).
Obama may not find himself behind bars tomorrow, or next month, or even next year. Yet with Trump surrounded by sycophants and with the two other branches of government paralyzed, the operative question should not be why would Trump arrest his opponents, but rather, why not?
Trump, after all, has openly mused about locking up political opponents since he first hit the campaign trail a decade ago. And he’s been keen on delegitimizing Obama for even longer, going back to the “birtherism” conspiracies Trump fueled about 15 years back. Dictators lie about what they’ve done, but they often tell us the truth about what they plan to do.
A small number of officials with some semblance of honor held Trump back during the first go round. They’ve been replaced by loyalists like Gabbard, Pam Bondi, and Kash Patel. The deeper Trump digs, the more tightly his advisors are bound to him. The more rules he breaks, the fewer off ramps they have without incurring consequences for their complicity, and the more reason they have to stay in power indefinitely. Every action compounds on the last one; Trump is rewarded for being more brazen and his inner circle is drawn closer and closer into the fold.
What happens next?
The next chapter in this story hinges largely on how voters and politicians respond. What Trump is doing now is floating a trial balloon. He’s gauging the volume of the public’s response when he acts out the state-backed persecution of a rival. Whether anyone in his own party will dare to object, or if Democrats will finally get their act together and try to stop him.
I know it’s a tired refrain, but imagine if Joe Biden did this! Or Obama. Or George W. Bush. I like to think that Americans wouldn’t brook this sort of behavior from any other president. There would be a loud response because even kidding about political arrests would be such a sharp break from established norms. Still, norms, as I’ve repeated since 2017, are unenforceable.
With Trump? Forgive me for being less sanguine about the chance that enough Americans will speak out when he mulls arresting Barack Obama. The public is desensitized after 10 years with Donald Trump as the main character in US politics.
Here is how it works:
When Trump posts a video of federal agents nabbing a former president, the news algorithm deprioritizes Trump’s frivolous investigations of Comey and Brennan. And when the DOJ launched the Comey and Brennan investigations, Americans forgot Trump’s decision to punitively strip former officials of their security details, endangering retired public servants like John Bolton, Mark Milley, and Anthony Fauci. ICE arrests and detains scores of people for exercising their First Amendment rights—or for no reason at all. It starts to feel like ancient history rather than an ongoing phenomenon. I don’t want to know what fresh abuse will numb us to today’s scandal. “That’s just Trump” is becoming a reflexive excuse for too many people.
More from The Next Move:
It’s depressing, but it doesn’t have to be inevitable. Being able to spot this cycle is the first step away from succumbing to antidemocratic inertia.
Look, Obama is not my favorite American president (I make no secret of this—even as saying so has gotten me in trouble with some of you in the comments!). Still, I have no tolerance for threats of political arrests. This is not some bold stand: It should be the bare minimum for a democracy. Presidents can differ on ideas. They can choose whether to reverse or advance their predecessors’ policies, and voters can register their approval or disapproval of that course. What can never be acceptable is the use of the coercive power of the state to litigate petty partisan disputes. Trump’s AI memes are declarations of intent, and public passivity is permission.
More from The Next Move:
Trump’s Secret to Limiting Dissent Without Outlawing It
There are more subtle ways for the president to silence his opponents.
Epstein Files: What Trump’s Opponents Need to Know
Donald Trump and his allies either fed a baseless conspiracy theory about Jeffrey Epstein. Or they’re defending a global pedophile ring. Any way you slice it, the president doesn’t look good.
AI Bots Supporting Cheeto’s Nazi Propaganda
Hitler’s propaganda minister, Hermann Goebels, would be proud of the current Nazi propaganda machine supported by AI bots on Twitter(Musk’s X) as reported by MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow Hundreds of posts on Twitter are intended to show MAGA supporters the incredible job that Cheeto’s cabinet members are doing
Bots are trained to say what MAGA supporters would say Now the split in Cheeto world the bots are confused about the Epstein scandal and same bot supports Bondi and the next day wants to get rid of Bondi System error
So check everything out with the apparent sources cited if it sounds unbelievable or not right snopes.com is another good way to verify information because this is going to get worse
These comments are disturbing.