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Obama resumes trash-talking tour, and you might want to grab a bucket

June 19, 2025 | | Print Article

Former President Barack Obama was back in the spotlight, with a tired warning about the end of democracy.

The former president conveniently ignored his own track record as he claimed at an event in Connecticut that the country is careening toward autocracy under President Donald Trump.

“If you follow regularly what is said by those who are in charge of the federal government right now, there is a weak commitment to what we understood – and not just my generation, at least since World War II – our understanding of how a liberal democracy is supposed to work,” Obama said at The Bushnell Performing Arts Center in Hartford.

(Video Credit: Barack Obama)

“There has to be a response and pushback from civil society, from various institutions and individuals outside of government, but there also have to be people in government in both parties who say, ‘No, you can’t do that,’” he told Heather Cox Richardson, a Boston College professor, according to Connecticut Public Radio.

“It is consistent with autocracies. It is consistent with Hungary under Orbán. It’s consistent with places that hold elections but do not otherwise observe what we think of as a fair system in which everybody’s voice matters, people have a seat at the table, and nobody’s above the law,” Obama claimed, evidently blocking the last four years of the Biden administration from his memory.

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“We’re not there yet completely, but I think that we are dangerously close to normalizing behavior like that,” he said.

The self-centered former president was sure to emphasize “facts” as well.

“In 2020, one person won the election, and it wasn’t the guy complaining about it,” he said. “And that’s just a fact, just like my inauguration had more people. I say that, by the way, not because – I don’t care – but facts are important.”

“In one of our major political parties, you have a whole bunch of people who know that’s not true but will pretend like it is,” Obama said. “And that is dangerous.”

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When Richardson asked him for a message for young people today, Obama said he was “optimistic” and that he’s “still the ‘hope’ guy.”

“I guess the thing when I’m talking to young people that they need to hear the most is, it is important to be impatient with injustice and cruelty, and there’s a healthy outrage we should be exhibiting in terms of what’s currently happening both here and around the world,” Obama said.

“But if you want to deliver on change, then it’s a game of addition, not subtraction. You have to find ways to make common ground with people who don’t agree with you on everything but agree with you on some things,” he added.

Obama’s words stirred plenty of reaction on social media, where X users dropped a reality check on the former president.

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Frieda Powers
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