The former president took off the gloves in speech at drive-in rally for Biden campaign
Former President Barack Obama delivered a blistering rebuke against his predecessor President Donald Trump on Wednesday evening during his return to the campaign trail.
During a drive-in rally in Philadelphia, Obama made the case why Americans should vote to elect his former vice president, Joe Biden, as the nation’s next president.
Obama made his most direct and piercing statements to date about Trump in a rare gloves-off stump speech in Pennsylvania, where Biden currently holds a lead in polls over Trump.
America’s first Black president called out Trump over his possible shady business dealings, not paying his taxes and his handling of the coronavirus pandemic.
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Mr. Obama expressed gripe with the president for being “incapable of taking the job seriously” and his inability of “helping anybody but himself and his friends.” He also slammed Trump’s claim that there was “not much” he could’ve done differently to address COVID-19, which has killed more than 220,000 Americans to date.
“Really?” Obama asked. “Not much? Nothing you can think of that could have helped some people keep their loved ones alive?”
Obama lambasted the president over a recent report that he had a secret bank account in China. “Listen, can you imagine if I had had a secret Chinese bank account when I was running for reelection?” Obama said, according to CNN. “You think Fox News might have been a little concerned about that? They would have called me Beijing Barry.”
The former president also hit Trump with a familiar criticism aimed at him by Democrats and foes alike: his taxes.
“Of the taxes Donald Trump pays, he may be sending more to foreign governments than he pays in the United States. His first year in the White House he only paid $750 in federal income taxes,” Obama said.
“My first job was at a Baskin Robbins when I was 15 years old. I think I might’ve paid more taxes working that year — dispensing ice cream. How is that possible? How many people here paid less than that?”
Obama instead offered American voters what he believed to be a better option on Election Day: Joe Biden and Democratic vice-presidential nominee Kamala Harris.
“It just won’t be so exhausting,” Obama said of a potential Biden administration. Voters, he added, are “not going to have to think about the crazy things … and that is worth a lot.”Obama has historically shown restraint when it comes to public statements about Trump, who infamously harassed the country’s first African American president with a racist conspiracy theory that he was not born in the United States. Trump has gone on to use the presidential podium to accuse his predecessor of spying on his 2016 campaign, describing it as “treason.”
Over the past four years since Trump was elected, Obama has gradually turned up the temperature with his rhetoric about Trump. While insiders have claimed he preferred to adhere to presidential tradition of not attacking his predecessor, Trump’s presidency has created a call to action of sorts.
David Axelrod, Obama’s longtime adviser, described it to CNN as such: “Former presidents tend not to delve too deeply into politics and certainly not the politics of their successors. I think that was his plan, but Trump changed that plan.”
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