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It took 10 months, but as 2023 came to an end, Sen. Tommy Tuberville finally gave up on the blockade that undermined his own country’s military. As 2024 gets underway, the Alabama Republican is apparently still taking an interest in matters related to the armed forces, though not in a constructive way.
As we discussed last week, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin is facing a legitimate controversy following his recent hospitalization, which he kept private from everyone — including the White House. It was against this backdrop that Tuberville sat down with Fox Business’ Larry Kudlow and said:
“It’s kind of a slap in the face to the president, though it goes to show you, and puts question marks there, Larry: Who’s running the show? Is it Obama?”
For now, let’s put aside the curious idea that Austin’s mistake raises questions about President Joe Biden’s leadership role. Instead, let’s ask a related question:
Are Republicans still on the “Maybe Obama is secretly in charge” thing?
NBC News reported in October that Donald Trump spent a chunk of the fall insinuating that Barack Obama was secretly still in control of the White House. As we discussed soon after, he’s not alone.
Megyn Kelly, a prominent conservative media personality, told an on-air audience last month, “There are a lot of people who think the Obamas are already running the government and that there is some sort of shadow puppet situation going on that they’re controlling.”
Kelly didn’t elaborate as to who the “people” are who believe such nonsense, but the group apparently includes former House Speaker Newt Gingrich: Two weeks earlier, the Georgia Republican appeared on Fox News and said he has a “hunch” that Obama is secretly “making decisions in the White House.”
In July, Republican Rep. Greg Murphy of North Carolina said during a Fox Business interview that he also believes that Biden is merely “a puppet for a progressive left committee, as it were, headed by Obama.”
Last year, Fox Business’ Maria Bartiromo also suggested that the former Democratic president might be secretly “running the country,” to which Republican Sen. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee replied that Obama’s meetings with Biden led people to believe that the former president was “the de facto leader in the White House.”
Bartiromo echoed the line two months ago, questioning whether Obama is secretly “directing” the incumbent president.
Now, evidently, Alabama’s coach-turned-senator is thinking along the same strange lines.
When I first took note of this conspiracy theory, I heard from a conservative reader who not only believed the idea that Obama was secretly in charge, he presented what he considered evidence: a list of prominent Obama appointees who now hold key positions in the Biden White House.
Except, that’s not actually proof of anything. It stands to reason that the incumbent president would want White House staffers to have some executive-branch experience, and the only other Democratic administration in the 21st century was Obama’s. What’s more, Biden worked closely with many of these same officials — because he was Obama’s vice president.
More recently, a reader alerted me to reporting showing Obama talking to Biden about strategies for this year’s elections. But again, there’s an enormous gap between “Democratic presidents share thoughts about campaign tactics” and “former president secretly runs the White House.”
What’s even stranger is why, exactly, so many Republicans are invested in this particular conspiracy theory. The idea appears to be rooted in the idea that Biden is old, so he must need someone else to lead the White House in secret.
But isn’t this counterproductive for the right? Once it becomes obvious that Obama, several years removed from government service, isn’t secretly in charge, aren’t we left with the obvious fact that Biden is perfectly capable, despite his age?
This post updates our related earlier coverage.