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Democrats are furious at the silence of living past presidents not trashing Trump

February 20, 2025 | | Print Article

Democrats are reportedly upset that former Presidents Joe Biden, Barack Obama, George W. Bush, and Bill Clinton have said almost nothing about President Donald Trump’s streak of executive actions.

“No one knows more about the importance of our presidents respecting separation of powers and showing restraint than former presidents,” Democratic strategist Joel Payne told The Hill. “Given Trump’s ongoing power grab, those voices and perspectives of our ex-presidents would be critical to the public discourse at this moment.”

It’s not even clear what “power grab” he meant. Everything Trump has done so far has been legal and constitutional.

“I don’t know what they’re waiting for,” a former Obama aide added. “The time isn’t when Trump ignores court rulings. The time is now.”

Trump has thus far not defied a single court ruling. The same can’t be said of his Democrat predecessor:

To be clear, the former presidents haven’t been completely quiet.

After Trump announced his plans to shut down the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), Obama posted an anti-Trump New York Times opinion piece to his Twitter/X feed.

Look:

However, this is IT — this is all combined they have said.

Democrats foolishly believe criticism from Bush would have been especially persuasive because he’s technically a Republican. But a former Bush aide told The Hill that it’s not his policy to “step on” other presidents.

“It’s out of respect to the office,” the former aide claimed. “It’s just not his style.”

Not everybody on the left even believes in bashing Trump.

“In the age of Trump, it’s more important than ever that we respect and adhere to long-standing traditions [of not attacking the president],” Democrat strategist Lynda Tran said. “We should have faith in the other branches of government — and the advocacy and justice movements — to take action to push back where appropriate.”

Susan Del Percio, a veteran Republican strategist who doesn’t care much for Trump, concurred, telling The Hill that it’s pointless for former presidents to trash-talk Trump.

“They can’t and they know it,” she said. “If they lend their voices to the conversation, they’ll just be taken down by Trump. If they speak out, it’ll be for the history books, not to affect the Trump presidency now. No one can influence Trump right now because he doesn’t care what anyone thinks.”

“It seems to me, given his actions, he acts as if he knows best. There’s no influencing. These presidents know that. If anything they understand better than anybody the power of the presidency,” she added.

Dovetailing back to Bush, he skipped the Republican National Convention last summer but did congratulate Trump on his election victory a day or so after the election.

“I congratulate President Trump on his election as 47th President of the United States of America, as well as Vice President-elect JD Vance and their families,” he said in a statement at the time.

Bush faced backlash from the radical left last year for daring to not endorse then-Vice President Kamala Harris.

“I‘m disappointed in people like him,” Never Trump lunatic George Conway told The Patriot-News at the time. “It will always be a mystery to me of how many people on the right, conservatives of good faith who are afraid to speak out or didn’t feel they had an obligation to speak out. I think they do.”

Conway also lectured Bush on Twitter/X:

Vivek Saxena
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