Jamelle Bouie/Flickr

By now we all know that one of the ways this president has demonstrated that he has the maturity level of a typical second grader is with his penchant for assigning derogatory nicknames to his opponents. While it is a habit that would embarrass any normal 71-year-old man, it has always been pretty obvious what Trump is trying to communicate with them.

For example, “little rocket man” really is a short narcissist who seems to enjoy playing games with missiles. Did Trump nail it with “low energy Jeb” or what? “Cryin’ Chuck Schumer” actually teared up during remarks about Trump’s travel ban. “Pocahontas” sends just the right nativist message about a woman with Native American ancestry. I suspect that “crooked Hillary” was probably field-tested by Cambridge Analytica on instructions from Steve Bannon in order to create a distraction from Trump’s corrupt history.

For the first time yesterday morning, Trump tweeted a nickname for Obama.

Thank you to Rasmussen for the honest polling. Just hit 50%, which is higher than Cheatin’ Obama at the same time in his Administration. — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 3, 2018

“Cheatin’ Obama?” Really?! How the hell did he come up with that one? It certainly isn’t because the former president ever “cheated” on his wife the way this president has repeatedly. It also doesn’t have anything to do with Obama’s presidency, but goes back to Trump’s birther days. Along with claiming that this country’s first African American president wasn’t born in the U.S., Trump consistently said that the former president wasn’t smart enough to get into Harvard, didn’t write his own books, and other nonsense allegations. In other words, “Cheatin’ Obama” is a racist dog whistle to all of the conspiracy nuts out there.

On September 16, 2016 Trump reluctantly admitted that Barack Obama was born in the United States. He did so after hoodwinking the press into broadcasting several military men praising his candidacy and followed the admission with a statement blaming Hillary Clinton for the whole ordeal. In other words, he took zero personal responsibility for all the lies. It should come as no surprise that he wants to rekindle that flame now that he’s in the White House.