by Earlier this month, during a rally in Pittsburgh, Barack Obama excoriated Donald Trump and his followers for believing that Hurricane Helen relieved undocumented immigrants.
“When did that become okay?” he asked the crowd, prompting applause and hollering.
But then he did something special. He said, “I’m not looking for applause.”
It felt like a more exasperated and exhausted version of the “Don’t boo! Vote” an order he used to draw out to supporters, and sometimes still does. But his face looked pained and disappointed — as if he was angry that he even had to talk about Trump.
Immediately, my head went back to May of 2011, when I was watching the White House Correspondents’ Dinner on TV with a bunch of friends at one of their apartments. All of us were interns in the Obama administration. We tried to keep our heads down during that time, despite hearing the constant conspiracy theories and demonizations about our boss on Fox News.
During that time, Trump has been spreading the ugly lie that Obama was not born in the United States while disparaging the president as a means of promotion. The Apprentice. So our baker felt great satisfaction as he roasted at dinner.
“Now, I know it has taken some flak recently, but no one is happier, no one is prouder to put this birth certificate to rest than the Donald,” Obama said on stage. “And that’s because he can get back to focusing on the issues that matter – like, did we fake the moon landing? What really happened in Roswell? And where are Biggie and Tupac? “
Earlier that week, Obama had published his birth certificate; the next day, he announced that he had ordered the mission that killed Osama bin Laden. That, along with his confident performance at the Correspondents’ Dinner, seemed to be enough to shut Trump down, and he eventually went on to run against Obama.
Obama’s election in 2008 inspired many young people – myself included – to move to Washington and try working within the political machine. I’m not going to pretend I’ve had any major interactions with Barack Obama, though. I only met him briefly and in fact I left my internship very disillusioned with the Democratic Party. That’s what drove me to journalism, where I could hold both parties accountable.
Still, over time, I would watch Obama’s speeches on the campaign trail, long after I left office. And I always paid particular attention to how he talked about Trump. Although he’s always been against Trump, these days, there’s a new frustration when he talks about him — not just about the man himself, but about his followers and the culture that surrounds him.
In 2016, as he prepared to leave office, Obama warned the Congressional Black Caucus that “I will consider it a personal insult – an insult to my legacy – if this community lets its guard down and fails to activate itself in the this election.”
In 2020, in his speech at the Democratic National Convention, he said: “The President and those in power – those who benefit from keeping things the way they are – are dependent on your cynicism. They know they can’t beat you with their policies. So they hope to make it as difficult as possible for you to vote, and to convince you that your vote is not important.”
All this was delivered with a sense of optimism about the liberal public he was addressing. Even at the 2024 DNC, he seemed playful and optimistic, at one point reciting the size of Trump’s penis and comparing him to “a neighbor who keeps her leaf blower running outside her window every minute of every day.”
Now it is different.
“Why would we go with that?” he said in Pittsburgh, stressing that people would have a problem with Trump’s claims if they came from the mouths of their friends or family.
“And yet, when Donald Trump lies or when he lies or shows complete disregard for our Constitution, when he calls POW losers or fellow citizens vermin, people make excuses for it. They think it’s okay,” he continued.
It is not wrong. On Friday, after Vice President Kamala Harris agreed that Trump was a fascist at a town hall, she was criticized by Speaker of the House Mike Johnson and Mitch McConnell. These are the same men who voted to acquit Trump of his actions on January 6th. They criticized Harris even after John Kelly, Trump’s former chief of staff, and Mark Milley, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, called him a fascist. and a dangerous person.
Of course, McConnell has never been respectful to Obama. During the former president’s first term, McConnell famously stated that his main goal was to make Obama a one-term president. He refused to join other congressional leaders in publicly warning about Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election. He also repeatedly said his greatest moment was blocking Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland to the Court Upper.
And Obama hasn’t forgotten about such obstruction from senior Republicans, paving the way for the GOP to become the “Hell No” Party that enabled Donald Trump. During a rally in Madison this week, he addressed Republican claims about Trump’s better economy than Biden head-on. The economy was better under Trump’s first few years “because it was my economy,” he said.
“I spent eight years cleaning up the mess left by the Republicans,” he said. “I spent eight years getting the car industry back on track, reopening factories.”
That original ugly lie that Trump spread about Obama’s birthplace was not only meant to confuse Obama’s race (although it is a telling sign of his racism.) It was meant to attack his patriotism. It was meant to question Obama’s devotion to the country, even though he repeatedly told his story as a “skinny kid with a funny name” who worked his way up to the presidency in America alone.
Now, Obama’s exhaustion and his exasperation feel like a plea. A plea that Americans show him his faith in the country was not wasted. And it’s not clear if it will.
