Obama takes on Trump and GOP as midterms loom
He urges voting to restore ‘sanity to our politics’
WASHINGTON – Previewing his midterm elections campaign message, former President Barack Obama on Friday launched a direct and blistering attack on President Donald Trump and Republicans.
Obama called on Americans to get to the ballot box in November to “restore some semblance of sanity to our politics.”
At one point referencing the “crazy stuff coming out of this White House,” Obama told an audience at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign that even if they don’t agree with Democrats on some issues, they should still want to see a “restoration of honesty and decency and lawfulness in government.”
“It should not be a partisan issue to say that we do not pressure the attorney general or the FBI to use the criminal justice system as a cudgel to punish our political opponents,” he said, in a reference to Trump. “Or to explicitly call on the attorney general to protect members of our own party from prosecution because an election happens to be coming up.”
Obama’s scathing attack on Trump comes during a tumultuous week for the White House and represents a departure for Obama, who has kept a low profile since leaving office. He has typically avoided even mentioning Trump by name in previous speeches.
Not on Friday.
Speaking to a packed auditorium with about 1,100 students, faculty and community members, he said young people are coming of age during a time when the powerful and privileged are pushing back on America’s ideals.
“It did not start with Donald Trump,” Obama said. “He is a symptom, not the cause. He’s just capitalizing on resentments that politicians have been fanning for years.”
The solution, he said, is not the alleged resistance movement inside the administration, working to thwart Trump’s worst impulses, as described by a senior official who penned an anonymous New York Times op-ed.
“They’re not doing us a service by actively promoting 90 percent of the crazy stuff that’s coming out of this White House,” he said. “There is actually only one check on bad policy and abuses of power, and that’s you. You and your vote.”
Trump mocked Obama’s speech before supporters in North Dakota.
“I’m sorry, I watched it, but I fell asleep ... I found he’s very good – very good for sleeping,” he said.
Later, as he made his pitch for Republican candidates, Trump told his supporters: “Isn’t this much more exciting than listening to President Obama’s speech?”
Some Republicans pounced on Obama’s remarks to bash his two terms in office and defend Trump.
“The more President @BarackObama speaks about the ‘good ole years’ of his presidency, the more likely President @realDonaldTrump is to get reelected,” Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., tweeted. “In fact, the best explanation of President Trump’s victory are the ‘results’ of the Obama Presidency!”
Said Republican National Committee spokesman Michael Ahrens: “In 2016, voters rejected President Obama’s policies and his dismissiveness towards half the country. Doubling down on that strategy won’t work in 2018 either.”
Obama made a case against voter apathy by unloading on the Republican Party, saying it has become a home for the politics of “division and resentment and paranoia” and its members are abdicating their responsibilities by doing nothing “when the president does something crazy.”
Obama blamed the GOP for unwinding campaign finance laws, attacking voting rights, handing out tax cuts without regard to deficits, casting votes to deprive people of their health insurance, rejecting science and undermining alliances. He also questioned a “cozying up” to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“What happened to the Republican Party?” he said.