In the wake of the “Obamagate” conspiracy theory, Jim Carrey has taken aim at Donald Trump once again in a comedic Twitter video in which he pretends to cough in the U.S. president’s face.
Though the 58-year-old actor didn’t actually cough directly in Trump’s face, he made it appear so by playing a clip of the 73-year-old on his TV while standing in front of it and violently hacking all over the screen.
During the clip, which shows footage of a press conference last week, Trump talks about an alleged “disgrace” that he is calling “Obamagate.”
But what is “Obamagate”? The bizarre and unsupported theory essentially paints Barack Obama as a supervillain by suggesting — without evidence — that he somehow committed treason while serving as the 44th U.S. president.
In response to Trump’s ramblings about the “very obvious” crime he claims Obama committed, Carrey wrote: “‘Obamagate’? Yo’mamagate!”
On social media, the Ontario-born actor has been extremely vocal about his distaste for Trump since early 2019, when he began painting caricatures of the U.S. president.
Early last week, Carrey unveiled a brand-new piece of art, which took aim at Trump’s overall job in handling the COVID-19 pandemic on a federal level.
In the artwork, the Ace Ventura star painted an angered Grim Reaper flipping off the 73-year-old Republican leader, suggesting he was “jealous” of the president’s “ability to double the death toll.”
On Sunday, he followed up with an updated coronavirus-related painting, which also criticizes U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson.
“Half of those deaths … preventable. REDRUM! REDRUM! REDRUM!” he added, referencing Stephen King‘s 1977 horror novel, The Shining.
“Obamagate” seems to have spawned out of the far-right Twittersphere, where someone apparently added “Gate” to Obama’s name in order to evoke Watergate — a shorthand for the infamous political scandal that ended Richard Nixon’s presidency.
On May 10, Trump first retweeted a message about “Obamagate” and, since then, has continued to repeat the phrase, just as he repeated the phrase “WITCH HUNT” during the Robert Mueller investigation.
Trump has described Obamagate as “the biggest political crime in American history, by far!”
On Monday, Phil Rucker of the Washington Post pointedly tried to get Trump to explain what he meant by that, however he was met with no proper response.
“What crime, exactly, are you accusing President Obama of committing, and do you believe the Justice Department should prosecute him?” asked the reporter.
“Obamagate!” Trump responded, before rambling about the severity of the phantom crime. “It’s a disgrace that it happened,” he said. “If you look at now, all of this information that’s being released. And from what I understand, it’s only the beginning.
“You know what the crime is,” he continued when asked to specifically detail what he was referencing. “The crime is very obvious to everybody.”
— With files from Global News’ Josh Elliott