Former President Barack Obama on Saturday attacked President Trump’s administration in searing and mocking terms, saying it was defined by “incompetence the likes of which we have not seen in modern times.”
Appearing in Cleveland at his first campaign rally of the midterm elections, Mr. Obama delivered his most forceful attack on Mr. Trump in recent memory. He also criticized an explosive campaign ad from the Republican nominee for Ohio governor, Vivek Ramaswamy, saying it exemplified a coarsening of American politics.
Of course American politics have been coarsening since the moment Trump stepped up. Coarsening is his mission in life.
Mr. Obama, who has been selective about publicly criticizing Mr. Trump, condemned his Republican successor’s stewardship of the country in language that was personal and pointed. He said in Ohio that Mr. Trump’s second term had amounted to “two years of chaos and cruelty and corruption,” argued that top administration officials were not “not serious people” and said Mr. Trump had led the country into an economically painful war in Iran “that nobody asked for.”
Mr. Obama, describing Mr. Trump as “you know who” or “this guy in the White House,” said America had never had a president “excel so wildly at just straight-up grifting.” And he cast Mr. Trump as disconnected from Americans’ needs, engrossed instead by White House renovation projects.
“He should be on HGTV,” Mr. Obama said, ridiculing Mr. Trump’s focus on applying gold trimmings to the White House. “He’s got the White House looking like Saddam Hussein opened a Cheesecake Factory. Just gold everywhere.”
Honestly? A Saddam Hussein Cheesecake Factory would probably be nicer and in better taste than Trump’s White House.
The appearances by Mr. Trump and Mr. Obama on Saturday were striking in their contrasting styles: While Mr. Trump’s speech was lengthy and meandering, Mr. Obama’s two speeches were far more scripted.
Mr. Trump spoke longer in his one speech than Mr. Obama did across two.
And we can be sure that Obama said far more than Trump did. Trump repeats and babbles and repeats again.
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