At a Saturday rally for Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden in Michigan, former President Barack Obama — who served alongside Biden for eight years in the White House — condemned Trump for his self-obsession and ignorance of the actual problems facing the American people. While Americans have struggled through the outbreak of the Coronavirus, which has been surging across the country yet again, Trump has been complaining about media coverage and talking up the crowd size at his 2016 inauguration. Obama noticed — besides his Saturday take-downs of Trump’s Coronavirus response failures, Obama also mockingly tore into Trump’s crowd size obsession.
Well, full circle: Trump is now complaining about coverage of his inauguration crowd size, falsely claiming pictures only showed empty space because they were taken "five or six hours early."
This was what was making him angry during his first week in office.
— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) October 21, 2020
Besides the debacle surrounding the crowd size at Trump’s inauguration — which was smaller than the crowd at Obama’s own 2009 inauguration, no matter what anyone on the president’s team says — Trump has also obsessed over the crowd sizes at his campaign rallies. Trump has repeatedly been revealed to be misrepresenting these crowd sizes. In reality, with days to go until Election Day — it’s not rally crowd sizes that will decide the election. Biden routinely leads by sizable margins in national and swing state polls.
Obama commented to rally attendees:
‘What is [Trump’s] obsession, by the way, with crowd size? You notice that? This is the one measure he has of success. He’s still worrying about his inauguration crowd being smaller than mine. It really bugs him. He’s still talking about that… Does he have nothing better to worry about? Did no one come to his birthday party when he was a kid? Was he traumatized? What’s with crowds?’
Obama continues mocking Trump: "Does he have nothing better to worry about? Did no one come to his birthday party when he was a kid? Was he traumatized? What's with crowds?" https://t.co/KrEHUrvpGo
— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) October 31, 2020
Obama subsequently brought his remarks to other issues at hand, including the Coronavirus crisis. Rather than seeming to prioritize effectively leading the country until a vaccine is available, Trump has been openly complaining about media coverage of the Coronavirus pandemic, no matter the fact that millions of Americans have been infected and over 230,000 have died. Trump has also held a slew of packed rallies around the country that have openly flouted Coronavirus-oriented public health guidelines — and when local leader Minnesota Governor Tim Walz (D) recently worked to impose social distancing guidelines on a Trump event, the president publicly melted down.
After Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz placed a cap on gatherings in the state — meaning only 250 were allowed into the president’s rally — Trump says, “He’s a weak governor, he’s done a terrible job. He doesn’t know what the hell he’s doing.”
— Kaitlan Collins (@kaitlancollins) October 30, 2020
Obama commented as follows:
‘Trump cares about feeding his ego. Joe cares about keeping you and your family safe. And he’s less interested in feeding his ego with having big crowds than making sure he’s not going around making more and more people sick. That’s what you should expect from a president.’
Obama: "Trump cares about feeding his ego. Joe cares about keeping you and your family safe. And he's less interested in feeding his ego with having big crowds than making sure he's not going around making more & more people sick. That's what you should expect from a president."
— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) October 31, 2020
Obama also observed that “kindness, humility, responsibility, helping somebody else out… used to be the definition of manliness,” entirely unlike the current president’s behavior. There are some serious consequences: according to a new Stanford study, a series of eighteen Trump rallies can be tied to about 700 subsequent Coronavirus deaths in the areas where the rallies took place. The rallies can act as accelerants for the spread of the Coronavirus among members of the community. No matter the president’s attempts to tamp down concern, the Coronavirus remains a deadly threat.
Barack Obama: "Kindness, humility, responsibility, helping somebody else out. That used to be the definition of manliness. Not strutting and showing off. Acting important and bullying people. It used to be being a man meant taking care of other people. Not going around bragging."
— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) October 31, 2020
Check out video of some of Obama Saturday remarks below:
Obama in Flint: "He's accusing doctors of profiting off this pandemic…[Trump] said doctors are overblowing it because they're going to make money off of it. He cannot fathom, he doesn't understand that somebody would risk their life to save others without trying to make a buck" pic.twitter.com/psKUg3ysmv
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 31, 2020
Obama: "Canada identified its first [coronavirus] case the same week that the US did … our morality rate is 2.5 times higher than Canada. If we had the same percentage of folks dying in Canada as we do here, nearly 90,000 would have died instead of 230,000." pic.twitter.com/sazw1y6wYD
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 31, 2020
