President Donald Trump called his predecessor, President Barack Obama, “grossly incompetent” when asked about Obama’s comments during a remote graduation ceremony speech. Obama, who rarely discussed Trump’s policies before the coronavirus pandemic, appeared to criticize the current administration without mentioning Trump by name. Trump repeated his comments on Twitter Sunday evening.
On Sunday morning, Trump was asked about Obama’s comments. Even though Trump admitted to not having watched Obama’s speech, that did not stop the president from commenting. “Look, he was an incompetent president, that’s all I can say. Grossly incompetent,” Trump said, reports The Guardian. Hours later, Trump tweeted in reference to Obama, “The most incompetent and corrupt administration in U.S. history!”
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Obama gave two commencement addresses Saturday, first to graduates of historically black colleges and universities. “More than anything, this pandemic has fully, finally torn back the curtain on the idea that so many of the folks in charge know what they’re doing,” Obama told the graduates from his home, reports the New York Times. “A lot of them aren’t even pretending to be in charge.”
A few hours later, Obama spoke again, this time in a nationally broadcast speech to high school graduates. In that speech, the former president told young adults that sometimes, the easy choices might not always be the right ones. “Doing what feels good, what’s convenient, what’s easy — that’s how little kids think,” Obama said. “Unfortunately, a lot of so-called grownups, including some with fancy titles and important jobs, still think that way — which is why things are so screwed up. I hope that instead, you decide to ground yourself in values that last, like honesty, hard work, responsibility, fairness, generosity, respect for others.”
For most of the past three years, Obama has not publicly criticized Trump, but that has changed in recent days. Last week, Obama’s private call with supporters leaked on Yahoo. In it, he called the Trump administration’s handling of the pandemic “an absolute chaotic disaster.” He blamed “tribal” trends in politics for the “anemic and spotty” response. “It would have been bad even with the best of governments. It has been an absolute chaotic disaster when that mindset — of ‘what’s in it for me’ and ‘to heck with everybody else’ — when that mindset is operationalized in our government,” Obama said.
While criticism of Trump’s handling of the crisis has continued, the president sought to revive his attacks on the Obama Administration, starting with “Obamagate,” a conspiracy theory accusing Obama of framing Trump and his associates with the Russia investigation. Trump also defended his response to the coronavirus pandemic, which has killed nearly 90,000 Americans.
“So I think we had a great weekend. We did a lot of terrific meetings. Tremendous progress is being made on many fronts, including coming up with a cure for this horrible plague that has beset our country,” Trump said Sunday. “It was a working weekend, it was a good weekend. A lot of very good things have happened.”
