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Donald Trump

9 ways Trump is worse than the GOP caricature of Obama: Jill Lawrence

Many Republicans no doubt wish Trump could be more like the real Obama.

Jill Lawrence
USA TODAY
Donald Trump speaks in Doral, Fla.

PHILADELPHIA — If Donald Trump seems familiar, it’s because he closely resembles someone — the caricature of Barack Obama that Republicans have tried to paint for eight years. The absurd attacks on Obama have not only come to life in their nominee, Trump takes them to cartoonesque heights unimaginable even by the GOP ridicule squad. So here you go, Democrats, a heaping platter of schadenfreude:

He’s just a celebrity!He’s the biggest celebrity in the world, but is he ready to lead?” a female narrator asked in a 2008 John McCain TV ad, as shots of Paris Hilton and a massive Obama rally in Berlin flashed by.

In 2016, I’ll see your supposedly empty celebrity and raise you a billionaire casino and golf-club developer, talk-show and gossip-page staple from way, way back, author of self-promoting books, veteran of four bankruptcies and star of two highly rated reality-TV shows. Can’t lose.

It’s all about him! How many times have conservatives gone after Obama for allegedly using the word “I” too much in a speech? Now they’re stuck with a narcissist who responds to the Orlando shooting with a tweet thanking supporters for “the congrats on being right” and boasts that “I alone can fix” the “disaster” that is America. Some people thought Obama had a Messiah complex when he talked about trying to slow the rise of the oceans. Well, move over Mr. President.

He’s too dim to function without a teleprompter! Obama’s supposed inability to talk off the cuff, despite all evidence to the contrary, was an attack line that would not die. It also proved awkward for the many Republicans who wisely relied on teleprompters for important moments.

Many in the party no doubt wish Trump would use one more often. Especially when he’s called on to do something like introduce his vice presidential pick.

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He has no experience! Even Sarah Palin — who had been mayor of a small town and spent 18 months as Alaska governor when she was picked as McCain’s vice president — mocked Obama as a community organizer.

The truth: Obama didn't have the longest resume. But he was a lawyer who had served as an Illinois state senator for eight years before winning election to the U.S. Senate in 2004. Maybe reality TV and bankruptcies are better preparation. But I doubt it.

He hates America!Fact-checkers have tried for years to kill the hardy but false GOP assertion that Obama is a serial apologizer for America and doesn’t think it’s anything special. Trump, on the other hand, really does trash-talk about America.

Just last week he told The New York Times that “When the world looks at how bad the United States is, and then we go and talk about civil liberties, I don’t think we’re a very good messenger.” He added: “I don’t know that we have a right to lecture” other countries. His doom-and-gloom view of the U.S. economy is even more skewed. The June jobless rate was 4.9%, 287,000 new jobs were created, and just during his convention week the Dow set a series of record highs.

He lies! Or, as Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C., shouted at the president during a joint session of Congress, “You lie!” But it’s Trump with the spectacular record — for instance, 36 statements rated 'pants on fire' by Politifact, 32 of them in 2015 and 2016, compared with nine total for Obama in the last nine years.

Obama did win “lie of the year” in 2013 for his frequent assertion that under the Affordable Care Act, “if you like your health care plan, you can keep it.” Trump bested him, however. He won “lie of the year” in 2015 for his entire oeuvre of lies or, as PolitiFact put it, “campaign misstatements … unhampered by accuracy.”

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He doesn’t respect the presidency! What a travesty, those shirtsleeves in the Oval Office. Trump has certainly upped that ante. Accuse a tough female questioner of being on the rag, defend the size of his manhood in a televised debate; the rules of respect have been defined down in a massive way. At least future presidents will be safe wearing just about anything to work on weekends.

He’s too nice to dictators and tyrants! Hah. Obama’s alleged “bows” to various leaders are nothing stacked up against what Madeleine Albright this week called Trump’s “strange admiration for dictators” – the “strength” of Chinese officials who put down the uprising at Tiananmen Square (with a massacre), the “A for leadership” he gave Vladimir Putin (Trump forces reportedly even made sure the 2016 GOP platform was nicer to Putin.)

He’s not nice enough to Congress! If only Obama would schmooze and play more golf, we’d have utopia-on-the-Potomac instead of world-class dysfunction. What we really need, apparently, is a president who trashed McCain’s time as a prisoner in Vietnam, told Sen. Jeff Flake he would lose his reelection, and called other senators names like “Little Marco” and “Lyin’ Ted.” Who criticized the appearance of “Lyin’ Ted’s” wife and suggested his dad might have been in on the JFK assassination.

Even the GOP is going to miss Mr. Congeniality — I mean, Mr. Obama — when he’s gone.

Jill Lawrence is the commentary editor of USA TODAY. Follow her on Twitter @JillDLawrence.

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