Obama tears into US leaders in online commencement speeches
nWASHINGTON: Former President Barack Obama has delivered a searing critique of the US response to Covid-19, telling graduating students in two speeches that “folks in charge” with “fancy titles” appear to be clueless and some “are not even pretending to be in charge”.
Obama did not name President Donald Trump, but the speeches were seen as a barely concealed attack on the current administration’s response to the pandemic, which he had earlier denounced as an “absolute chaotic disaster”.
His first speech was for the graduating students of Historically Black Colleges and Universities and the second to graduating high-schoolers around the country, both delivered via video link.
“This pandemic has fully, finally torn back the curtain on the idea that the folks in charge know what they’re doing,” Obama said in his commencement speech to black colleges students. “A lot of them aren’t even pretending to be in charge.”
To graduating high-schoolers, the former president said, “Doing what feels good, what’s convenient, what’s easy, that’s how little kids think. Unfortunately a lot of so-called grownups, including some with fancy titles and important jobs, still think that way, which is why things are so screwed up.”
He spoke of economic and social inequalities, school shootings, and the future.
“Be alive to one another’s struggles. Stand up for one another’s rights. Leave behind all the old ways of thinking that divide us – sexism, racial prejudice, status, greed – and set the world on a different path.”
The US now accounts for nearly a third of all global fatalities and cases.