Former President Barack Obama said his successor Donald Trump’s handling of the new coronavirus pandemic was “absolute chaotic disaster“American media reported on Saturday.
This scathing criticism, the most explicit to date from him, the former Democratic president made it Friday evening during a half-hour telephone conversation with former collaborators of his government, including Yahoo News obtained a recording.
Obama isn’t just about “an individual or a party”
Barack Obama invokes in particular the response to the health crisis to justify the need to choose good leaders and call on his ex-advisers to invest in the campaign of Joe Biden, his former vice-president and democratic candidate for the presidential election of November facing Donald Trump.
“The coming election, at all levels, is so important because we will not only face an individual or a political party“he said, according to his words reported by several media. He believes that the real opponent are”long-term trends” as “to be tribal, to be divided, to see others as enemies“, which are likely to characterize”american life“.
Still very popular with Democrats, Barack Obama had already hinted that the Republican billionaire had “dismissed warnings“on the risks of a pandemic.
Donald Trump is accused by his critics of having first minimized the threat, then of having given contradictory and confused instructions, between the calls for caution and the haste to see the economy restart.
Prosecution of former Trump advisor dropped
In Friday’s conversation, the first black president of the United States (2009-2017) also reversed the controversial decision of the United States Department of Justice to drop the charges against Michael Flynn, a former Donald Trump advisor prosecuted for lying about his contacts with a Russian diplomat.
“There is no precedent to be found on a person charged with perjury who gets away with it“, he said. “This is the kind of situation where we can begin to fear that (…) our basic reading of the rule of law will be threatened“, he warned.”When we take this path, it can go very quickly, as we have seen elsewhere“, he added, calling not to underestimate this event.
There too, he underlines to see there a reason to support his former vice-president. “This is why I will spend as much time as necessary to campaign as intensively as possible for Joe Biden“, he assured.
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