Just how bad was it in swampville when President Trump was beginning to take off in the polls ahead of the 2016 election?

Well, here's a pretty credible conversation recorded for a documentary intended to tell the election story for the benefit of Hillary Clinton's fans:

Barack Obama called Donald Trump a "fascist" in a phone conversation with Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia during the 2016 presidential election, Kaine says in a video clip featured in an upcoming documentary about Hillary Clinton. Kaine, Clinton's running mate on the Democratic ticket, recounts the call during an exchange with Clinton that was caught on camera in 2016. Kaine's wife, Anne Holton, was also present. "President Obama called me last night and said: 'Tim, remember, this is no time to be a purist. You've got to keep a fascist out of the White House,'" Kaine says before adding with a laugh that Obama "knows me and he knows that I could tend to err." Clinton replies, nodding, "I echo that sentiment." She then puts her hands to her chest and says, "But that's really — the weight of our responsibility is so huge."

Weight of responsibility? Almost like Nancy Pelosi with her impeachment gravitas, wearing black, declaring "prayerful" drivel, telling her giggling leftists to stifle it and pretend to be serious while the cameras were on.

Except it's quite possible wretched Hillary and malevolent Obama really did believe it.

Three things stand out about this telling little conversation:

One, Obama is an ideologue. Claiming that Trump is a fascist has zero, repeat zero, basis in reality. Fascists don't cut taxes and regulations, for one, fascists are all in for state takeovers of industry to start, quite similar to what was attempted in the Obama administration, actually.

To call Trump a "fascist" is the statement of a far-left fanatic. "Fascist" is an old-time Communist Party U.S.A. epithet hurled by that crowd since the 1941 Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, derived from the USSR's party line after Hitler's betrayal of Stalin's Molotov-Ribbentrop pact of 1939. Up until that date, Communists and fascists (read: National Socialists) were pretty comfortable with one another. "Fascist" became an epithet hurled by communists all down the Comintern clientele abroad despite both sides being socialist in character. The term was then carried forward by the red diaper babies who first led the "filthy speech" movement of the early 1960s and then the "New Left" of the late 1960s, particularly in its truly crazed fringes such as the Weather Underground movement. Surprise, surprise, that was led by Obama's mentor, Bill Ayers.

Fanatic is right. So despite that "Mr. Cool" exterior, Obama was a fanatic all along.

Two, hurling the term "fascist" at Trump wasn't just a sign of the detritus from the '60s in the Obama persona, it was also the talk at the time of Antifa and other crazies, plotting at the time to disrupt any Trump presidency. It suggests Obama was in tune with these Occupy Wall Street derivatives, the craziest of the crazy on the far left as it was. Someone on the Obama side was in touch with those people, either echoing how they felt, or quite possibly, directing the maniacs. That bears further watching. He was talking then like they talk now, and that kind of talk wasn't common before Trump.

Three, a mask has slipped. Obama maintained that "no drama Obama" persona for the cameras, first staying aloof from the election as it moved through, and later smiling and treating president-elect Trump all nice in public to suggest he was doing a gracious transition. He also portrayed himself repeatedly as a reasonable "moderate." Now it's obvious that all along, he was a far leftist and a churning storm of discontent, desperate to win at any cost. He was speaking like an Antifa-style leftist to Kaine and Hillary Clinton, a desperate man desperate to ensure that Hillary won the election. It also circumstantially supports that Obama was desperately plotting to shut down Trump behind the scenes all along. His minions were doing unmaskings of innocent Americans caught up in intelligence dragnets, for one, quite illegally. Team Obama was beginning to manufacturie the lie that Trump colluded with the Russians to steal the election from Hillary Clinton that would reappear in force after Trump unexpectedly won the election. They were paying big dollars for the phony Steele dossier, which even Trump critic Fiona Hill identified as a suspect Russian desinformatsiya magnet. They were paddling as fast as they could under the water surface while presenting a calm, detached persona to the public - and fully disposed to commit mischief because in the world of the far-left, the end justifies the means.

Well, the Kaine call told us a lot about the Obama disposition shortly before Hillary Clinton lost the election to Trump, leaving a fanatic with his hands on a lot of figurative nuclear buttons that he dispatched to stop Trump.

A mask indeed is off, revealing a fanatic.

Image credit: Washington Post shareable YouTube screen shot