Trump dips into internet conspiracy theories with his latest lines about Obama

WOLFEBORO, N.H. — Former President Donald Trump has been insinuating for weeks that former President Barack Obama is secretly still in control of the White House. On Monday in New Hampshire, he explicitly said it. 

“It’s never been worse than it is now under crooked Joe Biden and, frankly, his boss, Barack Hussein Obama,” Trump told a crowd of hundreds at a campaign stop. “I think it’s his boss.”

It’s not a new conspiracy theory: A 2020 video of Obama on late-night television circulated in conservative corners of the internet this fall, showing him deadpanning to late-night TV host Stephen Colbert that in an ideal world, he would have a stand-in with an earpiece so he could deliver lines and stay out of the spotlight.

There has never been any evidence to suggest Obama has more influence over the current White House beyond providing suggestions or offering help at an occasional meeting with Biden. And reporting since the Obama presidency has painted a more complicated and cooler picture of the Obama-Biden relationship than the "bromance" lauded during their days as ticket-mates.

But the general notion that someone else is in charge percolated in Trump’s speeches in recent weeks, until he fully adopted the premise in New Hampshire. 

“I don’t believe he’s smart enough to be doing this stuff,” Trump said about Biden at an Iowa campaign stop on Oct. 1. “I believe it’s the people that are surrounding him,” he said, alluding to the idea that other decision-makers are operating in the background. 

Less than a week later, Trump implied that Biden was not really the president as he discussed then-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s handling of budget negotiations. 

“I don't ever think he knows what's going on,” Trump said of Biden in an interview with the conservative political commentator John Solomon. “I said Kevin … I think this is the president’s, whoever the president is, it’s not yours,” he said, recalling a conversation he said he had with McCarthy about who should be taking responsibility for budget negotiations.

On Monday, Trump seemed to answer his own question. Suggesting the possibility of a third world war at his Wolfeboro campaign event, he said, “This is obliteration, and Obama has plenty to do with it.”

“Obama has plenty to deal with. I call him, I call him Biden’s boss,” he said.

The idea of Biden as a shadow leader has circulated in some parts of the internet since before his inauguration. The Colbert clip that aired in 2020 proved it to some — never mind the humorous context.

In June, Daily Wire co-founder Ben Shapiro posted a meme of the Colbert interview on Instagram captioned with an ambiguous “LOL.”’ Shortly afterward, conservative media outlets ran with the interview and began writing probing headlines fitting it in with broader questions about Biden’s age and capabilities, which public polling shows are concerns for voters.

Even before Trump explicitly called out the conspiracy theory Monday, a number of Trump supporters had long been all in on the baseless claim that Obama is still at the helm.

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“Somebody’s got to be behind the scenes doing it,” said Craig Gingrich, 75, a retired teacher from Cedar Falls, Iowa, who was waiting in line for a Trump rally in nearby Waterloo on Saturday.

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“Obama is probably running the show,” said Gingrich, who plans to support Trump in the upcoming Iowa caucuses. 

Kenny Mracek, a professional sanitation technician from Lawler, Iowa, said he thinks Obama signaled his intention to remain in power before the end of his second term. 

“Barack Obama made a statement before he finished his second term that it’d be nice if he could stay in office the rest of his life and be a dictator like some of the other smaller countries,” he said.

That might be a reference to a speech Obama gave to the African Union in 2015.

“Africa’s democratic progress is also at risk when leaders refuse to step aside when their terms end. … I love my work. But under our Constitution, I cannot run again. I can’t run again. I actually think I’m a pretty good president — I think if I ran, I could win. But I can’t,” he told the gathering of African leaders in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

“Nobody should be president for life,” he added.

That is, of course, far from the first time Trump has peddled unproven and outlandish conspiracy theories. He has retweeted QAnon-promoting accounts, furthered claims of election fraud in 2020 and repeatedly led the charge on the false claim alleging Obama wasn’t born in the U.S. 

All these years later, Obama is once again in the middle of Trump’s public conspiracy theorizing — and that of his supporters.

“How come Barack Obama didn’t move out of Washington, D.C.?” asked Nick Rooff, 58, of Waterloo, Iowa, who saw Obama’s post-presidential home purchase in the city — where his daughters were still in school — as evidence that he’s still in control.