Former President Barack Obama tore into President Donald Trump on Friday over what he said was his failure to stand up to Nazi sympathizers.
Obama remarks were made during a speech at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
For the first time, the former president directly criticized Trump over one of the most controversial moments of his presidency, when he equivocated in offering blame for violence last summer between white supremacist and Nazis, and their opponents, last year in Charlottesville, Virginia.
“We are Americans. We’re supposed to stand up to bullies, not follow them,” Obama said. “We’re supposed to stand up to discrimination and we’re sure as heck supposed to stand up clearly and unequivocally to Nazi sympathizers. How hard can that be? Saying that Nazis are bad.”
Trump drew intense criticism last year after he suggested that both neo-Nazis and counter-protesters were equally responsible for the violence that erupted at a rally led by racist groups in Charlottesville.
Obama on Friday also criticized Trump for capitalizing on racial and economic resentments that he said had been fanned for years by politicians, CNN reported.
“It did not start with Donald Trump. He is a symptom, not the cause,” Obama said of current political tensions.
“He’s just capitalizing on resentments politicians have been fanning for years,” he continued. “A fear, an anger that’s rooted in our past, but is also born of the upheavals that have taken place in your brief lifetimes.”
While Obama has occasionally delivered veiled criticisms of his successor since leaving office, he refrained for more than a year from taking on Trump by name.
Obama’s speech on Friday also called for a reexamination of American values and ideals.
“I’m here today because this is one of those pivotal moments when every one of us as citizens of the United States needs to determine just who it is that we are, just what it is that we stand for,” Obama said.
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