More than one election is needed to reverse the divisions that Donald Trump fueled in the United States. Ex-president Barack Obama said this in an interview with the BBC. In an interview with CBS, he compared his successor to a dictator who does everything to stay in power.
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The victory of Obama’s ex-Vice President Joe Biden is just a first step to redress the divisions in the country, which he says has grown even greater since Donald Trump became president.
“We are very divided today, clearly more than when I first campaigned for the presidential election in 2007 and won in 2008,” Obama said in an interview to the BBC following the release of his autobiography. This is partly due to the fact that Donald Trump “fueled divisions because it helped his policies.”
Obama regrets that “crazy conspiracy theories” and “the decay of truth” have increased polarization. “It will take more than one election to reverse those trends,” he said. According to Obama, the polarization should not only be combated by politicians, but there is also a need for structural changes and people should listen to each other and look for a “common set of facts” with which they can agree.
“What is interesting and unfortunate about this election is that the lack of allegiance to the truth has consequences when promoted by the most important elect in the country,” Obama added, referring to President Trump. He refuses to admit his defeat, a week after Joe Biden was declared the winner of the presidential election. The Democrat gathered 306 electors, the president only 232. Trump accuses Democrats of falsifying the election.
Like a dictator
CBS also broadcast an interview with Obama on Sunday, in the program ’60 Minutes’. There, the former president compared his successor to a dictator. On Trump’s allegations of electoral fraud, Obama said, “It is another step in delegitimizing not only the upcoming Biden administration, but democracy in general. And that is a dangerous path. ”
“In recent years there has been a feeling that literally anything is allowed and justified in order to gain power.” According to Obama, this is not only the case in the US, because all over the world there are “strong men and dictators who think they can do anything to stay in power: ‘I can kill people, I can put them in jail. throw. I can organize fake elections. I can oppress journalists. ‘”
“But that’s not who we should be. And I think one of the signals Joe Biden needs to send to the world is, ‘No, those values that we preached and believed and held, we still believe in them.’ ”
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