I’m seething with rage and resentment. I can’t let go even a week after President Trump’s accusations about former President Obama were exposed as the lies they always were.

What started with President Trump’s Saturday morning wiretapping tweets nearly three weeks ago was finally, definitively debunked last week. FBI Director James Comey and National Security Advisor Mike Rogers (Trump’s nominee) sat shoulder to shoulder before the House Intelligence Committee and batted away all the maybes, what ifs, and possibilities pitched to them. Republicans seemed not to want to accept what they both confirmed—no Obama wiretapping of Trump Tower and the Trump campaign. Director Comey’s forthright statement, “The FBI and the Justice Department have no information to support” Trump’s wiretap assertions.  

I’ve been channeling Luther since President Trump first issued the smear against the former President, not only accusing him of a felony, but also calling him “bad” and “sick.” Luther, you may recall, is former President Barack Obama’s fictional anger translator—a character created by the popular comedy duo Key and Peele. In the long running sketch, the Faux Obama played by Jordan Peele, speaks in the sophisticated calm manner characteristic of the real former Commander in Chief. His anger translator, played by Keegan-Michael Key, is a hot-tempered respondent who supposedly translates what the President really wants to say—in exasperated, expletive-laced rants. Because these days truth is stranger than fiction, the comedic twosome imagined the fictional President’s post-election weekly farewell address to America in a way that is uncanny:

Faux gray-haired Obama looks into the camera telling the pretend audience, “We all have to accept that we have someone else calling the shots," to which angry Luther translating the President’s real thoughts, screams, “Vladimir Putin, ya’ll! We got a naked Ruskie on horseback, gonna be running the show!”

Out of the mouths of brilliant prescient comedians.

I understand the big bombshell coming out the House Intelligence hearings was another confirmation—that the FBI has been conducting an investigation into possible collusion between President Trump’s campaign administrators and others. The implications of that frighten me, but I just can’t put aside the intentional soiling of the former President’s character and reputation. And I’m clear that it is an extension of the racist birther conspiracy also created out of whole cloth by President Trump.

I wish the former President would file a lawsuit. I wish he would let Luther or a sharp-tongued surrogate deliver a response worthy of the libelous offense. Something like the in-your-face warning I heard so much growing up when folks were very, very serious—“Keep my name out of your mouth unless you’re praying.” Since President Trump is not likely to offer an apology, I think some nasty trash talking is called for, even if the former President is too presidential to engage in it.