Shots have been thrown out between President Donald Trump and his predecessors, with Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush all expressing concerns about his administration and policies. This public fighting among a small group of former presidents is very unusual, but it shows how far this administration is going.
Former President Barack Obama has been especially vocal, saying that President Trump shows a “weak attachment to democracy.” Speaking in Hartford, Connecticut, Obama suggested the United States is coming “dangerously close” to accepting authoritarian behavior as normal, especially because there has been little resistance to false claims, like the idea that the 2020 election was stolen.
He criticized members of a major political party for acting as though these lies were true, calling it “dangerous,” per the Washington Post. While some Democrats want Obama to speak more forcefully, he has told them to “stop looking for a savior” and instead “toughen up” and focus on winning elections.
More Former Presidents are turning on Trump
Bill Clinton has also joined in criticizing Trump, expressing worry about Trump’s willingness to ignore court rulings. During an appearance on CBS Sunday Morning, Clinton talked about how unusual it is for a president to believe “Whatever I want should be the law of the land. It’s my way or the highway.” He predicted that voters would eventually reject this kind of leadership.
Even George W. Bush, the only living former Republican president, has indirectly criticized Trump’s cuts to foreign aid programs. Although Bush has mostly stayed out of the spotlight as Trump changes the Republican Party in ways that go against his and his father’s legacies, Bush appeared in a video with Obama and others to thank employees of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), which Trump has tried to reduce funding for.
Obama on Trump: "There are questions about his competence… Just word salads… You'd be worried if grandpa was acting like this… This is coming from somebody who wants unchecked power."
— Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur) October 23, 2024
"We don't need to see what an older, loonier Donald Trump looks like w/ no guardrails."
Bush stressed the importance of programs like PEPFAR, his global AIDS initiative, and questioned whether it is not in the country’s best interest for millions of people to survive. President Trump, in response, has not held back in fighting back.
He has falsely suggested that Obama was involved in writing the “Epstein files” and is mismanaging the construction of his presidential library. Trump also shared a social media post showing fake mug shots of Obama and his former advisers, as well as an AI-generated video of Obama being arrested by FBI agents. He has repeatedly claimed, without proof, that Joe Biden’s staff used an autopen to commit a crime and a conspiracy, an accusation Biden calls ridiculous and false.
