Former President Barack Obama has warned that the U.S. is “dangerously close to normalizing behavior” prevalent in authoritarian nations.
Obama, 63, spoke at the Bushnell Performing Arts Center in Hartford, Connecticut, Tuesday night amid nationwide protests against the Trump administration and its immigration raids to deport unauthorized immigrants.
“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, according to Connecticut Public Radio.
“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 added.
“What we're seeing right now… is not consistent with American democracy,” he warned. “It is consistent with autocracies.”
He cited Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán as an example.
“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 and people have a seat at the table and nobody's above the law,” said the former president and senator. “We're not there yet completely, but I think that we are dangerously close to normalizing behavior like that.”
Obama argued that one of the main issues behind the conflict is that voters and public officials can’t agree on what’s factual.
“In 2020, one person won the election, and it wasn’t the guy complaining about it,” said Obama in reference to President Donald Trump’s false and debunked claims that the election was rigged against him.
“And that's just a fact, just like my inauguration had more people ... I don’t care, but facts are important,” he said.
“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,” said Obama. “And that is dangerous.”
After Trump’s first inauguration, Trump sent his first press secretary, Sean Spicer, out for his first briefing to claim that his inauguration crowd was the largest crowd in history, despite ample evidence to the contrary.
A Boston College historian and professor, Heather Cox Richardson, moderated Tuesday’s discussion and asked Obama what he would say to young people to remain optimistic about the future.
“I’m still optimistic – I’m still the ‘hope’ guy,” the former president said.
He went on to emphasize the importance of being “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.”
“But if you want to deliver on change, then it’s a game of addition, not subtraction,” he said. “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.”
“When people actually meet and get to know each other... what Lincoln called those ‘better angels’ come out,” he added. “People start recognizing themselves in each other and they start trusting each other, and that's not just the basis for democracy, but that's the basis for our long-term salvation.”
Obama’s comments come after he took to X on Sunday to share some thinly veiled criticism against the Trump administration’s immigration policies.
“Thirteen years ago, my administration acted to protect young people who were American in every single way but one: on paper,” he wrote. “DACA was an example of how we can be a nation of immigrants and a nation of laws. And it’s an example worth remembering today, when families with similar backgrounds who just want to live, work, and support their communities, are being demonized and treated as enemies.”
“We can fix our broken immigration system while still recognizing our common humanity and treating each other with dignity and respect. In fact, it’s the only way we ever will,” he added.
However, Obama’s administration deported many more people in a single year than Trump has ever managed.
In 2013, 438,421 people were deported. No other president has come close since then.
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