Disinformation: How the Obama Era Led to a Trump Era

(2025) On June 16, 2015, the GOP’s Frankensteinian monster came to life, broke out of its straps, and jumped onto a descending Trump Tower golden escalator.

What led to this phenomenon? In 2012 two centrist think tank members wrote that the biggest political story of the preceding four years was “the radical right-wing, off-the-rails lurch” of the Republican Party’s agenda and relationship to truth. Against this backdrop Trumpism was conceived.

Disinformation — mendacity — went from fringe to mainstream. Mitt Romney, 2012 GOP presidential nominee, made serial flip-floppiness and prevarication acceptable. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and others honed their racial stereotypes about America’s first Black president, Barack Obama. The “nice, respectable” Republican families shrugged off the GOP-aligned tea party’s vile lies and bigotry. They quietly looked the other way, which amounted to tacit approval. Attention-starved silver-spoon billionaire Donald Trump launched his political career by appointing himself leader of the “birthers,” who disguised their racism behind the red herring belief that the president was a Muslim born in Kenya and not eligible to hold the office. The rest is histrionics.

This book is an entertaining account of Trumpism coming of age in the era of Obama. It’s a well-researched description of the cultural landscape that culminated in the greatest feat of political confidence artistry in American history: the reelection of President Donald Trump.■

Get your copy today. [Tom Ersin has degrees in communications and counseling. He’s a long-time political observer and author of a half-dozen nonfiction books on 21st century U.S. politics.]