About that rumor of Barack Obama and George W. Bush working together to oust Donald Trump…
In the wake of Donald Trump betraying nearly everything that reasonable people on either side of the aisle think America stands for, we’ve seen a fascinating level of bipartisanship pushback against him among those who are not in office – even as the Republican Congress continues to mostly appease him. Now there’s a rumor flying fast and furious across social media that former Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush are working together behind the scenes to help oust him.
Here’s the thing. It sounds like the kind of thing that they’d both be willing to do. They’ve been seen working together before, such as in the wake of the shooting of police officers in Dallas in 2016. Neither one of them has any affinity for Donald Trump, and privately, they’re each probably outraged in their own way at what Trump is trying to do to democracy. The single most effective way for them to push back would be to pool their resources and connections an rely on each other for political cover.
But I’ve studied this ‘Obama and Bush working together to oust Trump’ rumor all across Twitter and social media. And while it’s pervasive, I can’t trace it back to any particular starting point. It’s not even clear where this is coming from, let alone whether there’s any validity to the original claimant.
So as much as a lot of us would like this one to be true for a lot of different reasons, I can’t find any evidence that there’s anything to it – just a whole lot of indiscriminate social media chatter. So let’s toss this rumor back onto the indiscriminate pile from which it came, unless something ends up surfacing that provides anything in the way of details or sourcing.
