Earlier this month, during a rally in Pittsburgh, Barack Obama excoriated Donald Trump and his disciples for lying that Hurricane Helene relief went to undocumented immigrants.
“When did that become OK?” he asked the crowd, which led to claps and hollering.
But then he did something unique. He said, “I’m not looking for applause.”
It felt like a more exasperated and exhausted version of the “Don’t boo! Vote” command he used to pull out for supporters, and sometimes still does. But the look his face was pained and disappointed — as if he was angry that he had to even talk about Trump.
Immediately, my head went back to May of 2011, when I was watching the White House Correspondents’ Dinner on television with a bunch of friends at one of their apartments. All of us had been interns in the Obama administration. We tried to keep our heads down during that time, despite hearing the constant conspiracy theories and demonizations about our boss on Fox News.
During that time, Trump was spreading the ugly “birther” lie that Obama was not born in the United States as he flirted with running for president as a way to promote The Apprentice. So our boss roasting him at the dinner felt thoroughly satisfying.
“Now, I know that he’s taken some flak lately, but no one is happier, no one is prouder to put this birth certificate matter to rest than the Donald,” Obama said onstage. “And that’s because he can finally get back to focusing on the issues that matter — like, did we fake the moon landing? What really happened in Roswell? And where are Biggie and Tupac? “
Earlier that week, Obama had published his birth certificate; the next day, he announced he had ordered the mission that killed Osama bin Laden. That, coupled with his confident performance at the Correspondents’ Dinner, seemed to prove enough to shut Trump up, and he ultimately passed on running against Obama.
Obama’s 2008 election motivated many young people — myself included — to move to Washington and try our hand at working inside the political machine. I’m not going to pretend I have had any major interactions with Barack Obama, however. I’ve only met him briefly and I actually left my internship severely disillusioned with the Democratic Party. That drove me to journalism, where I could hold both parties accountable.
Still, over time, I’d watch Obama’s speeches on the campaign trail, long after I left his office. And I always paid special attention to how he spoke about Trump. While he’s always opposed Trump, these days, there is a new sense of frustration when he talks about him — not just about the man himself, but about his followers and the culture that surrounds him.
In 2016, as he prepared to leave office, Obama warned the Congressional Black Caucus that “I will consider it a personal insult – an insult to my legacy – if this community lets down its guard and fails to activate itself in this election.”
In 2020, in his speech at the Democratic National Convention, he said: “The president and those in power – those who benefit from keeping things the way they are – they are counting on your cynicism. They know they can’t win you over with their policies. So they’re hoping to make it as hard as possible for you to vote, and to convince you that your vote doesn’t matter.”
All of this was delivered with a sense of optimism about the liberal community he was addressing. Even at the 2024 DNC, he seemed playful and hopeful, at one point making an innuendo about the size of Trump’s penis and comparing him to “a neighbor who keeps running his leaf blower outside your window every minute of every day.”
Now it’s different.
“Why would we go along with that?” he said in Pittsburgh, while underlining that people would have a problem with Trump’s claims if they came out of the mouths of friends or family.
“And yet, when Donald Trump lies or cheats or shows utter disregard for our Constitution, when he calls POW’s losers or fellow citizens vermin, people make excuses for it. They think it’s OK,” he continued.
He’s not wrong. On Friday, after Vice President Kamala Harris agreed that Trump was a fascist at a town hall, House Speaker Mike Johnson and Mitch McConnell denounced her. These are the same men who voted to acquit Trump for his actions on January 6. They denounced Harris even after John Kelly, Trump’s former chief of staff, and Mark Milley, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said he was a fascist and a dangerous person.
Of course, McConnell has never been respectful towards Obama. During the former president’s first term, McConnell famously said that his main goal was to make Obama a one-term president. He refused to join other congressional leaders to publicly warn about Russian interference in the 2016 election. He’s also said on multiple occasions that his proudest moment was blocking Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court.
And Obama has not forgotten about such obstructionism from senior Republicans, which in many ways paved the way for the GOP becoming the Party of “Hell No” that enabled Donald Trump. During a rally in Madison this week, he addressed the Republican claims about Trump having a better economy than Biden head-on. The economy was better under the first couple years of Trump “because it was my economy,” he said.
“I had spent eight years cleaning up the mess that Republicans left,” he added. “I had spent eight years getting the auto industry back on track, reopening factories.”
That original ugly lie that Trump spread about Obama’s birthplace was meant to impugn not only Obama’s race (though it was a telltale sign of his racism.) It was meant to attack his patriotism. It was meant to question Obama’s devotion to the country, even though he repeatedly said his story as a “skinny kid with a funny name” who worked his way up to the presidency could only be possible in America.
Now, Obama’s exhaustion and his exasperation feels like a plea. A plea that Americans show him his faith in the country wasn’t misplaced. And it’s unclear if they will.