With mere days to go until Election Day, on Saturday, former President Barack Obama visited Miami, Florida, where he delivered a speech on behalf of the campaign of Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden — who, of course, served alongside Obama for eight years as vice president. Obama had some fierce condemnations for Donald Trump, who he characterized as having utterly failed the United States with his handling of the Coronavirus pandemic, which has claimed the lives of about 225,000 Americans as of this weekend. Obama added that with Trump’s angry response to tough questions about his team’s policies and plans, he’s proven that he’s in no way fit for a second term.
Hello, Florida! It's #VoteEarlyDay and we’re just 10 days away from this election. I want to see you make a plan today for how you’re going to get involved and vote. Let’s get to work. https://t.co/lq3jqYjrOX
— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) October 24, 2020
As the former president poignantly told voters:
‘As a general rule, [Trump] is not a person who likes to take responsibility for anything. But you know the job doesn’t work that way… Inventing conspiracies doesn’t make people’s lives better. You’ve got to have a plan. You’ve got to do the work.’
Obama: "As a general rule, this is not a person who likes to take responsibility for anything. But you know the job doesn't work that way … Inventing conspiracies doesn't make people's lives better. You've got to have a plan. You've got to do the work."
— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) October 24, 2020
Obama shared that he “did hope that, for the country’s sake,” Trump would “show at least a little bit of interest in taking the job seriously” — but, the former president added, that’s “not how it’s worked out.” Trump “hasn’t shown any interest in doing the work or helping anybody except himself and his friends,” Obama observed. As he jokingly put it later, “‘Florida Man’ wouldn’t even do this stuff. Why are we accepting it from the president of the United States? It’s not normal behavior.” Indeed, the Trump administration has frequently worked to benefit Trump and his allies, to the point of Trump frequently mostly ignoring Russian aggression but trying to bribe Ukraine into investigating the Bidens as a de facto favor to the Trump re-election campaign.
Obama in Miami on Trump: "I did hope that, for the country's sake, he'd show at least a little bit of interest in taking the job seriously. That's not how it worked out. He hasn't shown any interest in doing the work or helping anybody except himself and his friends."
— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) October 24, 2020
This prioritization of the president’s personal agenda on the part of the White House has very serious consequences. Discussing the Trump team’s Coronavirus response — or at times, lack thereof — Obama sarcastically observed:
‘You think he’s hard at work coming up with a plan to get us out of this mess? Well, I don’t know, because I know he’s had a tough week. Everybody’s been very unfair to Donald Trump this week… He doesn’t have a plan. He doesn’t even acknowledge the reality of what’s taking place all across the country.’
Obama in Miami: "You think he's hard at work coming up with a plan to get us out of this mess? Well, I don't know, because I know he's had a tough week. Everybody's been very unfair to Donald Trump this week."
— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) October 24, 2020
Obama on Trump: "He doesn't have a plan. He doesn't even acknowledge the reality of what's taking place all across the country."
— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) October 24, 2020
Just this weekend, Trump has yet again been complaining about coverage of the Coronavirus crisis. He claimed on Twitter that the “Media is doing everything possible to create fear prior to November 3rd” with their coverage of the pandemic, which is nonsensically ludicrous. Americans are dying! What’s Trump doing? He’s whining about the media coverage of the crisis. At a North Carolina rally over the weekend, the president complained:
‘That’s all I hear about now. Turn on television, Covid, Covid, Covid, Covid, Covid, Covid.’
So he’s upset because the media is talking about the crisis that’s killing thousands of Americans at a time instead of what exactly… how great Donald Trump is? Trump has seemed to dismiss the responsibilities of the presidency in the name of his ego.
"That's all I hear about now," Trump said, complaining of the amount of media attention the virus gets as he campaigned in North Carolina. "Turn on television, Covid, Covid, Covid, Covid, Covid, Covid."
More than 225,000 Americans have died from the coronavirus.
— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) October 24, 2020
When pressured over his administration’s behavior, the president has repeatedly freaked out. Recently, he stormed out of a 60 Minutes interview before its natural end and eventually complained on Twitter that the interview had been “terrible Electoral Intrusion,” as if he imagines that there’s some kind of nefarious election meddling conspiracy to… ask him questions.
Obama on Trump: "He got mad and walked out of the interview. He thought the questions were too tough. Too tough? Miami, listen, if he can't answer a tough question like what would you like to do in a second term, then it's our job to make sure he doesn't get a second term."
— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) October 24, 2020