President Donald Trump accused former president Barack Obama on March 4 at 5:35 a.m. of being involved in a McCarthyist operation against him during the 2016 election. Trump’s Twitter accusation, which said Obama wire tapped Trump Tower, cited nothing to prove his claims.
Accusing Obama of McCarthyism is one of Trump’s wildest claims yet. Though Obama helped continue forms of government surveillance when he renewed the Patriot Act in 2011, claiming he is a McCarthyist is both inaccurate and offensive. McCarthyism is about making accusations of subversion or treason without regard to evidence, and Trump does just that on a regular basis. 
Trump’s accusations were merely a scare tactic. Because of his scandals involving Russia, he wants to change the narrative and act like a victim of anti-Republican conspiracy.
“Trump isn’t distracting from the investigation; he’s seeking to discredit it,” wrote Peter Beinart, a contributing editor for the Atlantic. “By alleging that Obama personally ordered his wiretapping, Trump is claiming that partisanship motivates the investigation into his campaign’s Russian ties.”
While Trump may say Obama is a McCarthyist, but it’s Trump who bears the most resemblance to Joseph McCarthy, the late U.S. senator responsible for this ideology. Trump is not a noble hero trying to save America, but rather, a power-hungry narcissist who uses fear and discrimination togain political capital. 
 “Both their political careers were launched by opportunistically channeling the fears of the moment,” wrote Ishaan Tharoor, a Washington Post reporter. 
McCarthy scared the American people by telling them the government and the wealthy were communists in disguise, and Trump does the same by demonizing immigrants, Democrats and the mainstream media.
In Trump’s America, left-wingers have already seen the beginning of McCarthy-like tactics being used against them. The “Professor Watchlist” came to the internet in late November to protect against those who “advance a radical agenda in lecture halls.”
“The Watchlist appears to be consistent with a nostalgic desire ‘to make America great again’ and to expose and oppose those voices in academia that are anti-Republican or express anti-Republican values,” wrote George Yancy, a philosophy professor at Duquesne University, in an opinion piece published in The New York Times. “The new ‘watchlist’ is essentially a new species of McCarthyism, especially in terms of its overtones of ‘disloyalty’ to the American republic.”
The site hides behind a pseudo-heroic mission to help students escape liberal propaganda, but creating a watchlist of supposedly liberal professors is McCarthyism in its purest form. Much like the actors and musicians blacklisted in the Red Scare, professors are being harmed because of loose claims that are hard to prove one way or another. 
When McCarthy helped create the “Un-American Activities Committee,” he tried to create an America out of his un-American values. Now that Trump has more power than McCarthy ever did, Americans need to stand up and fight to ensure Trump’s presidency does not change what makes this country great. 
We may not be undergoing a Red Scare in this day and age, but we might be going through an Orange Scare. Trump can deflect his corruption on Democratic leaders, journalists and everyday liberal Americans, but he will never be the American leader who stands for real American values. 
Lynne Bunch is an 18-year-old mass communication freshman from Terrytown, Louisiana.