Former US leader Barack Obama attacked President Donald Trump as a failure during a speech on Wednesday, August 20 (Thursday, August 21, in Manila), saying the former TV host is treating the presidency like a reality show.
Obama went all out against Trump in the Democratic National Convention this year, according to excerpts of his speech released in advance. The convention, held fully online for the first time due to the coronavirus pandemic, formally names Joe Biden as US presidential candidate and Kamala Harris as his running mate.
In his speech, Obama said that on handing over the White House to Trump in 2017, he thought the Republican “might show some interest in taking the job seriously; that he might come to feel the weight of the office and discover some reverence for the democracy that had been placed in his care.”
“But he never did,” Obama said, according to excerpts of his speech released early.
“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,” he said.
Obama continued: “Donald Trump hasn’t grown into the job because he can’t. And the consequences of that failure are severe. 170,000 Americans dead. Millions of jobs gone. Our worst impulses unleashed, our proud reputation around the world badly diminished, and our democratic institutions threatened like never before.”
Trump responded by telling reporters that Obama had been “a terrible president.”
Biden, 77, the former Delaware senator who served as Obama’s vice president for eight years, was officially nominated on Tuesday.
Ahead in the polls, he will deliver his own acceptance speech on Thursday, August 21, at the conclusion of the four-day convention, which was to have been held in the battleground state of Wisconsin before being shifted to an online format.
Kamala Harris hits Trump’s ‘failure of leadership’
Harris, the California senator whom Biden picked to be his vice president, was set to speak live from Wilmington, Delaware, Biden’s hometown and campaign headquarters.
Accusing Trump of turning “our tragedies into political weapons,” Harris in her prepared speech called on Americans to vote for Biden, “a president who will bring all of us together – Black, White, Latino, Asian, Indigenous – to achieve the future we collectively want.”
“Donald Trump’s failure of leadership has cost lives and livelihoods,” she said. “We’re at an inflection point.”
The nomination is the latest in a lifetime of firsts for the 55-year-old daughter of a Jamaican father and Indian mother who were immigrants to the United States.
Harris was the first black attorney general of California, the first woman to hold the post, and the first woman of South Asian heritage to be elected to the US Senate.
The Republican Party is to hold its virtual convention next week and nominate Trump to serve four more years.
Trump has chosen the White House South Lawn as the location for his acceptance speech — a controversial decision given that presidents are legally required to separate their campaigning from taxpayer-funded governing. – with reports from Agence France-Presse/Rappler.com
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