Former president Barack Obama, longtime nemesis of Donald Trump, took the stage at the Democratic National Convention on Tuesday night and cut the Republican candidate down to size in an impassioned speech.
Obama called out Trump as a dangerous and self-serving hack preoccupied with increasing his own power at the cost of everyday people who has stoked the flames of division in the country and tricked Americans into thinking there’s no hope for a better future. He also took aim at Trump’s strange obsession with crowd sizes, in a quick moment reminiscent of his 2011 roast at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner.
“This is a 78-year-old billionaire who hasn’t stopped whining about his problems since he rode down his golden escalator nine years ago. It’s been a constant stream of gripes and grievances that’s actually gotten worse now that he’s afraid of losing to Kamala,” Obama said. “The childish nicknames and crazy conspiracy theories and weird obsession with crowd size,” he trailed off, making a cheeky gesture with his hands. See for yourself.
Trump has always fixated a little too hard on how big things are — whether that is his opponent’s crowds, hurricanes, or his nether regions (ew) — making Obama’s jab hilarious. On a more serious note, the former president also formally endorsed Vice-President Kamala Harris, painting her candidacy in clear contrast from Trump’s doom-and-gloom, regressive image of America.
“We have a broader idea of freedom. We believe in the freedom to provide for your family if you’re willing to work; the freedom to breathe clean air and drink clean water and send your kids to school without worrying if they’ll come home. We believe that true freedom gives each of us the right to make decisions about our own life — how we worship, what our family looks like, how many kids we have, who we marry. And we believe that freedom requires us to recognize that other people have the freedom to make choices that are different than ours,” Obama said. “That’s the America Kamala Harris and Tim Walz believe in. An America where ‘We the People’ includes everyone. Because that’s the only way this American experiment works.”
