As the most relentless champion of birtherism, Donald Trump spent years attempting to undermine Barack Obama’s presidency—but to little avail. Sure, his racist campaign resulted in Obama releasing his birth certificate, which then-reality star Trump repeatedly bragged about. But it proved, at the time at least, to be a pyrrhic victory for Trump, the chapter concluding with his own public humiliation at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner in 2011. “Obviously, we all know about your credentials and breadth of experience,” Obama said in a five-minute send-up of Trump. “Just recently, in an episode of Celebrity Apprentice, at the steakhouse, the men’s cooking team did not impress the judges from Omaha Steaks. And there was a lot of blame to go around. But you, Mr. Trump, recognized that the real problem was a lack of leadership. And so ultimately, you didn’t blame Lil’ Jon or Meatloaf. You fired Gary Busey. And these are the kind of decisions that would keep me up at night.”
Trump was visibly embarrassed by the roast, deepening his grudge for Obama and perhaps even inspiring his 2016 bid to replace him. Is that a petty reason to run for president? Of course it is. But Trump has long appeared to be fueled by grievance. During the last election cycle, his personal umbrage at Obama aligned with white America’s sense of resentment toward the nation’s first black president. This, among other factors, helped vault him into the unlikely position of dismantling his predecessor’s legacy.
Other than further enriching himself and his friends and family, erasing Obama has been just about the only tangible accomplishment, as it were, of his presidency. Trump’s wall? Unbuilt. His attempts to replace the Affordable Care Act? He couldn’t even do it when his party controlled both chambers of Congress, thanks to a dearth of any substantive ideas. But he has been able to undo a number of Obama accomplishments, from landmark moves Trump cast as failures (withdrawing from the Paris climate accord and the Iran nuclear deal) to smaller programs he has targeted for no apparent reason than spite (Michelle Obama’s school nutrition standards). Now, Trump appears poised to deliver another petty strike at Obama’s legacy: According to NBC News, it seems the president will not be inviting his predecessor to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue for the ceremonial unveiling of his White House portrait, breaking with a contemporary presidential tradition meant to symbolize unity over partisanship among American leaders.
“This modern ritual won’t be taking place between Obama and [Trump],” people familiar with the matter told the outlet. “And if Trump wins a second term in November, it could be 2025 before Obama returns to the White House to see his portrait displayed among every U.S. president from George Washington to [George W. Bush].”
As NBC News noted, the ritual has been meant to project harmony among presidents, even those with significant policy differences, as was the case with Obama and Bush. “We may have our differences politically,” Obama said at Bush’s ceremony in 2012, “but the presidency transcends those differences.” Of course, there is nothing that transcends politics for Trump, who has filtered even the deadly pandemic unfolding under his watch through a partisan lens and—with the public health and economic crises mounting in an election year—has recently taken to attacking Obama again. His latest barrage has been as revolting as it is confusing, with Trump accusing Obama of crimes even he cannot name. His sons, meanwhile, have mounted an even more repulsive insinuation campaign against Obama’s former vice president, Joe Biden, baselessly suggesting that the presumptive Democratic nominee is a pedophile. Such attacks are drawn not from real policy disputes Trump may have with his predecessor, but—like everything this president does—are clearly motivated by his own petty, personal vendettas. “You’ve got a president who’s talking about putting the previous one in legal jeopardy, to put it nicely. We have not seen a situation like that in history,” presidential historian Michael Beschloss told NBC News. “It takes antipathy of a new president for a predecessor to a new level.”
Obama himself seems fine without the invite; sources familiar with the matter told NBC News that the former president “has no interest in participating in the post-presidency rite of passage so long as Trump is in office.” Which is understandable: Given his decade-long project to undermine and erase Obama’s presidency, Trump’s involvement any symbolic ritual to preserve its legacy would ring insultingly false—especially as he seeks to stoke fear and outrage in his base toward Obama as part of his reelection campaign. “The Obama Administration is turning out to be one of the most corrupt and incompetent in U.S. history,” Trump projected Sunday. “Remember, he and Sleepy Joe are the reasons I am in the White House!!!”
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