I can understand that a man as egotistical as Barack Obama misses being the big cheese, but the sun — blessedly and belatedly in the opinion of your truly — has set on the Obama White House years. There is a no sheriff in town, as they say, and it’s time for Obama to take his place out of the sun.
That means doing stuff other than what the president does. Or, conversely, not doing the same things the president does. Like show up in the same international destinations or meeting with the same world leaders at the same time as Donald Trump or shortly thereafter.
But that’s precisely what Obama has been doing. Granted Trump is undoing much of Obama’s benighted legacy, but that is his prerogative a president, just as it was Obama’s when he was first sworn in in 2009.
Will this presidential election be the most important in American history?
Yet, has recently met with the leaders of Italy, the UK, Germany, Canada, and most, egregiously, with South Korea’s President Moon, who he met in Seoul only three days after Moon visited President Trump a the White House. The declared topic of their meeting was — wait for it! — President Trump. No kidding!
Who does Obama think appointed him to ride herd over his successor? A more important question is whether he is guilty of violating the Logan Act, which prohibits private citizens — and even former presidents — from undermining official U. S. business abroad.
According to Wikipedia:
The Logan Act (1 Stat. 613, 18 U.S.C. § 953, enacted January 30, 1799) is a United States federal law that details the fine and/or imprisonment of unauthorized citizens who negotiate with foreign governments having a dispute with the United States. It was intended to prevent the undermining of the government’s position. The Act was passed following George Logan’s unauthorized negotiations with France in 1798, and was signed into law by President John Adams on January 30, 1799. The Act was last amended in 1994, and violation of the Logan Act is a felony.
Not all of the nations named above are “having a dispute with the United States,” but I believe the spirit of the law still applies to Obama’s shenanigans, which are clearly an attempt to undermine — or at the very least keep tabs on — Donald Trump’s presidency. How long is Trump going to allow this to go on?
At a minimum the president should send a message to every national leader stating in no uncertain terms that Obama is not the President of the United States, that he in no way represents the United States, and that any meeting that any foreign leader agrees to conduct with the former occupier of the White House will be considered an offense and a breach of protocol.
