Search icon

Politics

07th Sep 2018

WATCH: Barack Obama has just torn into Donald Trump while giving a speech at the University of Illinois

Rudi Kinsella

Obama Clinton

This is his first time he has done so since leaving office in 2016.

Former President of America Barack Obama has torn into Donald Trump, claiming that he is “capitalising on resentment.”

Perhaps the most damning moment of the speech came when Obama criticised the way the current President reacted to the Charlottesville riots that took place in 2017.

He very bluntly slated Trump for not condemning the racially-charged protests, saying: “How hard can that be, saying that Nazis are bad?”

Trump infamously responded to these protests by saying that there was “blame on both sides.”

Obama also discussed claimed that Trump was a symptom of hatred, saying: “You happen to be coming of age during one of those moments.

“It did not start with Donald Trump, he is a symptom, not the cause. He is just capitalizing on resentment that politicians have fanning for years. A fear, an anger that is rooted in our past but is also borne in our enormous upheavals that have taken place in your brief lifetimes.”

He also criticised the op-ed that took appeared in the New York Times this week, that claimed that there were people in the White House intentionally not following Trump’s orders.

Obama stated that this was not how democracy worked, saying: “And by the way the idea that everything will turn out OK because there are people inside the White House who secretly aren’t following the President’s orders,” he said. “That is not a check. I am being serious here. That is not how our democracy is supposed to work.”

LISTEN: You Must Be Jokin’ with Conor Sketches | Tiger Woods loves Ger Loughnane and cosplaying as Charles LeClerc