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Former President Barack Obama said President Donald Trump is “capitalizing on resentment that politicians have been fanning for years” and questioned “What happened to the Republican Party?” a preview of Obama’s message for the fall’s midterms — and his most pointed rebuke to date of his successor in the White House.
Our live coverage of President Obama’s speech has concluded, but you can scroll down below for highlights. Visit CNN Politics for more.
President Obama ended his speech on Friday with a message of hope for those concerned about the country’s current path: “We have been through much darker times than these.”
Somehow, Obama said, “each generation of Americans carried us through to the other side.”
They did that “not by sitting around and waiting for something to happen, not by leaving it to others to do something, but by leading that movement for change themselves,” he said.
He told the assembled students that taking America “in the direction of fairness and justice and equality and opportunity” could “be the legacy of your generation.”
He ended the speech, which went just over an hour, by telling them, “I believe in you,” and promising he would “be right there with you every step of the way.”
In other words, the former president is no longer going to shy away from speaking out.
President Barack Obama, calling on Americans to stop looking for reasons not vote and instead look for hard-working people with “America’s best interest at heart,” told students it was indifference that was the greatest threat to our democracy, and not the current president.
“The antidote to a government controlled by a powerful few, a government that divides is a government by the organized, energized, inclusive many. That’s what this moment’s about,” he said.
Obama continued: “That has to be the answer. You cannot sit back and wait for a savior. You can’t opt out because you don’t feel sufficiently inspired by this or that particular candidate. This is not a rock concert. This is not Coachella. We don’t need a messiah. All we need are decent, honest, hard-working people who are accountable and who have America’s best interests at heart.”
Speaking of ways to make democracy work, President Obama said Americans have to be open to each others’ differing opinions, but that doesn’t mean abandoning our principles or “maintaining some phony version of civility.”
“That seems to be, by the way, the definition of civility offered by too many congressional Republicans right now,” he said, hammering them for staying polite while they get what they want, then clicking their tongues and issuing “vague statements of disappointment” when President Trump “does something outrageous,” but failing to do anything about it.
“That’s not civility. That’s abdicating your responsibilities,” he said.
President Barack Obama rebuked President Trump’s policies and urged Americans to take a stand against bullies, blasting Trump’s attacks on the press, the FBI, Department of Justice and Attorney General Jeff Sessions.
The President’s attacks on these institutions, Obama said, shouldn’t be partisan issues. “We are Americans. We’re supposed to stand up to bullies. Not follow them,” he said.
Obama then took a jab at Trump’s response to the Charlottesville violence:
President Obama sought to remind Republicans just who started the economic recovery that’s led to strong numbers like this morning’s jobs report.
“By the time I left office, household income was near its all-time high, and the uninsured rate hit an all-time low, poverty rates were falling,” Obama said. “I mention this just so when you hear how great the economy is doing right now, let’s just remember when this recovery started.”
He continued, “When you hear about this economic miracle that’s been going on, when the job numbers come out, monthly job numbers, and suddenly Republicans are saying it’s a miracle, I have to kind of remind them, actually, those job numbers are the same as they were in 2015 and 2016.”
President Obama slammed the idea that there were Trump administration staffers working actively to undermine President Trump and stop him from following some of his work instincts, a theme of Bob Woodward’s book as well as the anonymous op-ed that ran in the New York Times.
“The claim that everything will turn out okay because there are people inside the White House who secretly aren’t following the President’s orders, that is not a check,” Obama said. “I’m being serious here. That’s not how our democracy’s supposed to work. These people aren’t elected. They’re not accountable.”
He added, “They’re not doing us a service by actively promoting 90% of the crazy stuff that’s coming out of this white house, and then saying, ‘Don’t worry, we’re preventing the other 10%.’ That’s not how things are supposed to work. This is not normal. These are extraordinary times. And they’re dangerous times.”
Watch:
President Barack Obama, speaking at the University of Illinois, sharply criticized the state of the Republican Party and said it had become radical, not conservative.
“But over the past few decades, the politics of division and resentment and paranoia has unfortunately found a home in the Republican party,” Obama said.
Over the past few years, the party, he said, has embraced conspiracy theories like the legitimacy of his birth certificate, attacked voting rights and rejected climate change.
He continued: “It’s a vision that says the protection of our power and those who back us is all that matters even when it hurts the country. It’s a vision that says the few who can afford high-price lobbyists and unlimited campaign contributions set the agenda, and over the past two years, this vision is now nearing its logical conclusion.”
“What happened to the Republican party?” Obama asked.
President Obama said fear of progress in American democracy didn’t start with President Trump.
Trump, he said, is “just capitalizing on resentments that politicians have been fanning for years.”
“It did not start with Donald Trump. He is a symptom, not the cause,” Obama said.
President Obama told students assembled at the University of Chicago that “this is one of those pivotal moments when every one of us, as citizens of the United States, need to determine just who it is that we are. Just what it is that we stand for.”
He said the next election would be the most important in a longtime, and they needed to vote because “our democracy depends on it.”
“The stakes really are higher. The consequences of any of us sitting on the sidelines are more dire,” he said, citing “a glance at recent headlines” as providing proof that “this moment really is different.”
Watch:
President Barack Obama, speaking to college students, explained why he had remained silent after leaving the White House.
For Obama, it was partly about connecting and catching up with family, but he also said he was trying to make room for “new voices and new ideas.”
In a lighthearted moment that drew laughter from the crowd, Obama pleaded with the students to call their parents.
“And I should add, by the way, now that I have a daughter in college, I can tell all the students here, your parents suffer. They cry privately. It is brutal. So please call. Send a text,” he said.
Obama then added, “Truth was, I was also intent on following a wise American tradition of ex-presidents gracefully exiting the political stage and making room for new voices and new ideas. We have our first president, George Washington, to thank for setting that example.”
President Barack Obama took the stage at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign campus, on Friday, telling the crowd of students, “It is good to be home,” and noting he had “a bunch of good friends here today.”
You can watch the speech live in the player above. It’s expected to last 45 minutes or so.
(Note: We initially wrote Obama was speaking at the University of Chicago. We’ve updated the post.)
President Barack Obama was editing his first public speech of the 2018 midterms on the plane, an aide to the former president tells CNN, scribbling notes and crossing out lines on a printed copy.
The auditorium is filled here in Illinois with a mix of students and Illinois politicos, including Sen. Dick Durbin and Illinois Democratic gubernatorial nominee JB Pritzker.
President Barack Obama will step back into the political fray Friday, delivering a speech that will preview his 2018 midterm election message and provide his most pointed rebuke to date of President Donald Trump.
One theme of Obama’s speech at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign will be how the history of the United States has always been progress and “backlash to progress,” and the former President will argue the country is currently in one of those backlash moments.
“We’re in one of those moments of backlash. And we didn’t get here overnight,” an Obama aide said.
Obama and Trump have not talked since the inauguration, a source tells CNN.
The speech comes ahead of Obama’s first campaign events of the midterms: a rally for a handful of Democratic congressional candidates in California on Saturday and an event for Richard Cordray, the Democratic gubernatorial candidate in Ohio, next Thursday.
