When Barack Obama Told Donald Trump the Truth About His Native Town

On a podcast last month, Barack Obama blasted Donald Trump for not being taken seriously in New York City, where Trump spent much of his time building his celebrity and enterprises before becoming president. Along with Obama, President Joe Biden , and former President Bill Clinton also made an appearance on the podcast. The program was taped in March. On the SmartLess podcast, Obama was polled by co-host Jason Bateman about his thoughts on the rapid erosion of ‘ protection and passion for democracy’ over the last several years.

As reported by HuffPost , after Trump’s dominance became apparent, Obama said that he was taken aback by the absence of guardrails inside the Republican Party. He did, however, say that “Trump didn’t surprise me. You watch Trump’s campaign, you watch his career, he’s never changed.” Obama further went on to say, “I mean, he comes from New York. There’s nobody in New York who does business with him or will lend him money. He is not considered a serious guy here. So, I was surprised he was elected, but I wasn’t surprised in terms of his behavior. I did expect … there would be some folks in the Republican Party who would say, ‘No you can’t go that far, you can’t start praising [Russian President Vladimir] Putin and saying that his intelligence is better than the U.S. intelligence agencies.’”

In the past, Obama has said that the 45th president poses a danger to democracy and has been a vehement opponent of Trump. In the year 2020, Obama made a sincere appeal: “Don’t let them take away your democracy.” He then launched into his harshest criticism of Trump yet, accusing the former US president and his associates of attempting to suppress the vote in the election. In his solemn speech, he warned that the current government will ‘tear our democracy down’ if it means winning, and he used the term ‘democracy’ 18 times. Speaking sarcastically, Obama said that he had sat in the Oval Office with both presidential candidates and had thought that Trump would ‘show some interest in taking the job seriously… ‘ To the contrary, he never did.

As reported by The Guardian , he stated, “For close to four years now, he’s shown no interest in putting in the work; no interest in finding common ground; no interest in using the awesome power of his office to help anyone but himself and his friends; no interest in treating the presidency as anything but one more reality show that he can use to get the attention he craves. Donald Trump hasn’t grown into the job because he can’t.” He went on to say that the coronavirus epidemic killed 170,000 Americans and caused millions to lose their jobs, all while the wealthy became wealthier.

But now, according to polling data analysis, Trump’s narrow edge over Joe Biden in the 2024 elections is slightly growing. March saw enough primary victories for the sitting president to earn the Democratic nominee for president in 2024 and the previous leader to secure the Republican candidacy. Since the two are either statistically tied or have slim leads in most polls, it seems that the outcomes will be close. As of May 24, according to FiveThirtyEight , a polling aggregator, the Republican has a 1.5 percent lead over his Democratic opponent. This is the former president’s biggest advantage since he held a similar lead on April 2.