Former President Barack Obama on Friday criticized President Trump for capitalizing on racial and economic resentments that he said had been fanned for years by politicians, stepping off the political sidelines and offering a rare criticism of the sitting president by name, CNN reported. The remarks were made during his speech at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
“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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