Former President Barack Obama has been inching towards increasingly critical comments about President Donald Trump in recent months. And, in a call with 3,000 former members of his administration, warned warned about the rule of law, criticized Trump’s coronavirus performance, and signaled that disinformation could be on the way.
NBC News:
After largely staying out of the fray since leaving the White House, former President Barack Obama pointedly criticized the Trump administration on a range of issues while also sounding the alarm about the spread of misinformation ahead of the presidential election as he rallied former members of his administration to join him in doing all they can to back his former vice president.
In a call with thousands of alumni of his administration Friday night, the contents of which were first reported by Yahoo! News, Obama also was harshly critical of the Justice Department directing prosecutors to drop its case against former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn, warning that the “rule of law is at risk.”
This is how “democracies become autocracies,” he warned.
And Obama slammed the Trump administration’s response to the coronavirus pandemic as an “absolute chaotic disaster.”
“What we’re fighting against is these long-term trends in which being selfish, being tribal, being divided, and seeing others as an enemy — that that has become a stronger impulse in American life,” Obama said according to audio provided to Yahoo! News, the authenticity of which was confirmed by multiple sources who participated on the call.
“It’s part of the reason why the response to this global crisis has been so anemic, and spotty, and it would have been bad, even with the best of governments,” he said.
The White House responded by basically saying Trump is doing a heck of a job.
Obama was careful not to name Trump often in the discussion, but was sharply critical of the Republican Party. He said that the party campaigns by stoking cynicism about whether government can effectively tackle the nation’s problems, and when they’re in power, takes steps to deliberately weaken it, making it a “self-fulfilling prophecy.”
He said his biggest concern if Trump is reelected is that it would double-down on an “us versus them” attitude that has become more common in a highly partisan political environment, and risks redefining the nation’s identity from a melting pot that had welcomed and embraced diversity.
From many published reports over the past few months one thing is clear: Obama will be on the stump campaigning for the Democratic Party presidential nominee this fall and will be highly outspoken.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.