Has Obama Lost His Mind?

President Obama offers a $4 trillion budget that blows the debt past $20 trillion. A week later he announces he’ll pop down to Cuba to meet with the Castros. Then he skips the funeral of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. And on Tuesday, Obama demanded that Congress shut down the Guantanamo Bay terrorist detention center.

What on Earth could he be thinking? Is he crazy?

He’s crazy, all right — crazy like a fox. Obama is intent on angering the conservative and Republican base — hence the Scalia diss and the Castro visit. Moreover, he wants to continue to paint the GOP as obstructionist, standing in his way of important business, like refusing to pass a budget and rejecting the closure of Gitmo. The seemingly outrageous and illogical acts of his final few months in office are calculated moves designed specifically to drive conservatives crazy — and thus appear increasingly radical — in the lead-up to a vitally important election year.

Ten days ago, Obama, in an effort to build a legacy, announced he would visit Cuba before he leaves the White House. But the move was also intended to draw criticism from Republicans, whom Obama could then paint as petty and small-minded. Sen. Marco Rubio immediately called the Cuban government “an anti-American communist dictatorship.” Sen. Ted Cruz, whose father emigrated from Cuba, said right away, “We need a president who stands up to our enemies.”

Surprise. The White House was ready with a response to the criticism. “The longstanding approach that those senators have supported has failed to produce any results,” said Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes that day, as if Team Obama had gamed out a response to “those senators.” “Let’s listen to the Cuban people.”

A few days before, Obama put forward a budget plan for fiscal 2017 that topped $4 trillion and ballooned the deficit $616 billion. The president wants to add another $10 tax per barrel of oil — just when the cost of gas has dropped to pre-Obama levels — and jack up taxes by $3 trillion over the next 10 years.

Republicans, not unexpectedly, were aghast. The budget did not seek any sort of middle ground and, with the GOP in control of both houses of Congress, was certainly dead on arrival (Republicans cancelled a hearing on it). But passage of the budget was never Obama’s plan: He sought only to sow discord and division.

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Once again, the White House was ready when GOP lawmakers objected. “I think Republicans cancelling the budget hearing is actually the clearest evidence that it’s Republicans who don’t want to have a public discussion about the budget. We certainly welcome the opportunity, and maybe we’ll get them to change their mind,” said Obama spokesman Josh Earnest.

The White House also trotted out Shaun Donovan, director of the Office of Management and Budget, to deliver this unifying message: “The question here isn’t a fight between the administration and Republicans; it’s a fight within the Republican Party.”

Last week, after the unexpected death of Antonin Scalia, one of the most respected legal minds to sit on the bench in decades, Obama refused to attend the funeral. That was the first time a sitting president declined to attend the funeral of a Supreme Court justice in over 60 years.

This time was a bit different: One of his own former aides bashed him.

“If we want to reduce partisanship, we can start by honoring great public servants who we disagree with,” Obama’s former “car czar” Steven Rattner tweeted. But the president’s decision — he did visit Friday and stayed off the golf course on the day of the funeral — was designed to draw GOP ire, too, and that it did. “I wonder if President Obama would have attended the funeral of Justice Scalia if it were held in a Mosque?” Donald Trump quipped. “Very sad that he did not go!”

Once again, the White House used the controversy created by Obama to bludgeon Republicans.”Some people actually want to use the funeral of the Supreme Court justice as some sort of political cudgel,” Earnest said. “The president doesn’t think that that’s appropriate, and, in fact, what the president thinks is appropriate is respectfully paying tribute to high-profile patriotic American citizens even when you don’t agree on all the issues. And that’s what he’s going to do.”

Finally, on Tuesday, Obama once again sought to divide by calling for the closure of Guantanamo Bay and moving some of its prisoners to parts of the U.S. — in opposition of the wishes and safety of the American people — despite the fact such a move is strictly prohibited by U.S. law.

But again, Obama clearly can’t think he’ll succeed. The move is already banned by law, and a Republican-controlled Congress is unlikely to redraft that law any time soon. House Speaker Paul Ryan tweeted: “Mr. President: It is against the law — & will stay against the law — to transfer terrorist detainees to American soil.”

Still, Obama begged to differ. “This plan deserves a fair hearing, even in an election year,” he said.

It won’t go anywhere, and he knew it. But he doesn’t care, because his intent was to draw criticism from Republicans and to give Democrats — including himself, members of Congress and even his former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton — a campaign issue for the upcoming elections.