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President Trump on Monday criticized President Obama for a 2016 claim that Trump would need a “magic wand” to deliver on his promises to boost U.S. manufacturing employment. In a Monday tweet, Trump misquoted Obama’s June 2016 criticism of his economic agenda that came shortly after Trump had all but officially clinched the Republican presidential nomination. Trump quoted Obama as saying, “President Trump would need a magic wand to get to 4% GDP,” at a PBS Newshour town hall event in 2016.“President Trump would need a magic wand to get to 4% GDP,” stated President Obama,” Trump tweeted. “I guess...

FULL TITLE: Obama, whose administration prosecuted and spied on reporters, claims Trump is very bad for criticizing newsrooms Former President Barack Obama is right when he says his administration’s attacks on the press can't be compared to President Trump's current crusade against the news media. The Obama White House was far worse for press freedoms. The former president spoke Friday afternoon at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, urging students to get involved in the November midterm elections. He dedicated a good deal of his address to drawing contrasts between his administration and the administration of President Trump. It was...

Former President Barack Obama visited The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Friday to accept the school’s ethics in government award, and to offer his take on “the state of our democracy.” And while Obama found plenty of time to denigrate Republicans for allegedly stoking fear during these “dangerous” and “extraordinary times,” he also dedicated a lot of his speech to patting himself on the back for everything from the improving economy to supposedly helping to heal the country’s racial divisions. All told, the former president referred to himself – I, My, Me – more than 102 times in about 64 minutes,...

President Donald Trump responded quickly to former President Barack Obama’s speech on Friday, claiming that he fell asleep during the speech. “I’m sorry, I watched it, but I fell asleep,” he said. “I found he’s very good for sleeping.” The president responded to Obama’s critical speech of his presidency during a fundraising speech in Fargo, North Dakota. Trump acknowledged that Obama was “trying to take credit” for the economic boom that the United States was experiencing after he got elected. He argued that the economy would have crashed if Hillary Clinton had won the election.

Former US President Barack Obama has launched a stinging attack on Donald Trump and the "crazy stuff that is coming out of this White House". "This is not normal, these are extraordinary times and they are dangerous times," Mr Obama told students at the University of Illinois. He called for "a restoration of honesty and decency and lawfulness in our government". The ex-president has kept a low profile since he left office in 2017 until now. Mr Obama told Friday's awards ceremony in Urbana, Illinois, that he had been intending to follow the American tradition of former presidents exiting the...

President Obama on Friday urged Americans to vote because “our democracy depends on it,” saying the stakes are higher than any other election in his lifetime. “I’m here to deliver a simple message: You need to vote because our democracy depends on it,” Obama said at a speech at the University of Illinois, as he wades back into the political fray. "But just a glance at recent headlines should tell you that this moment really is different,” he said. “The stakes really are higher. The consequences of any of us sitting on the sidelines are more dire." Obama later in...

Former President Obama criticized President Trump and Republicans for taking credit for the growing economy, arguing the economic recovery began during his presidency. Obama also mocked Republicans for praising monthly jobs report that he suggested they undersold, at best, when he was president. "When you hear how great the economy is doing right now, let's just remember when this recovery started," Obama said in remarks at the University of Illinois. "When the monthly job numbers come out suddenly Republicans are saying its a miracle," he added. Obama said his presidency saw similar numbers, after the recovery from the Great Recession...

Former President Barack Obama bashed President Trump for taking credit for the strong American economy during a politically charged speech at the University of Illinois on Friday. “By the time I left office, household income was near its all-time high, and the uninsured rate had hit an all-time low, and wages were rising, and poverty rates were falling. I mention all this just so when you hear how great the economy is doing right now, let’s just remember when this recovery started,” Obama said to applause from the audience. “When you hear about this economic miracle that’s been going on...

Former President Barack Obama criticized President Trump in a highly-anticipated speech on Friday 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. "It did not start with Donald Trump. He is a symptom, not the cause," Obama said of current political tensions in a speech at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. "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...

Former President Obama on Friday lamented the state of politics today, calling out his successor, Donald Trump, by name as he started his push to ramp up Democratic energy for midterms. Mr. Obama made his return to the political arena by giving a speech at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign after receiving the Paul H. Douglas Award for Ethics in Government. He praised America’s accomplishments but said there is a darker side to progress when politicians peddle resentment and mistrust to preserve the status quo. “It did not start with Donald Trump. He is a symptom, not the cause,”...

Obama could not hold back his irritation that Trump is receiving credit for the roaring economy nearly two years after his leaving office. At a speech at the University of Illinois, Obama scoffed that some of the greatest economic numbers in American history are occurring under Trump’s administration. Obama mentioned the financial crisis at the beginning of his term saying “When I came into office in 2009 we were losing 800,000 jobs a month.” “Millions of people were losing their homes. Many were worried we were entering into a second Great Depression. So we worked hard to end that crisis...

Former President Barack Obama on Friday used a speech at the University of Illinois to sharply criticize his successor as well as claim ownership of the U.S. economic recovery. Speaking in Urbana, Ill., where he received an ward for ethics in government, Obama recalled that the U.S. economy was losing 800,000 jobs a month when he entered office. “We worked hard to end that crisis but also break some of these longer-term trends,” said Obama, who is planning a series of campaign trips ahead of the midterm elections in November. “By the time I left office, household income was near...

Warning that these are "extraordinary" and "dangerous" times, former President Barack Obama on Friday unleashed his most direct and forceful attack on President Donald Trump and said internal resistance in the administration is not the right way to stop him. During a speech at the University of Illinois, Obama slammed "crazy stuff" coming out of the Trump White House and blasted the president for trying to politicize the Justice Department.

In an urgent and defining speech today, former President Barack Obama set himself up as a heavyweight counterpoint on the campaign trail to President Donald Trump -- as both men make plans to vigorously support their party’s candidates in the final two months of the midterm elections. Obama delivered his message at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign campus, and implored students to vote, saying that a look at recent headlines shows that "this moment is different.”

Former U.S. President Barack Obama assailed President Donald Trump and Republicans on Friday, urging Democrats to deliver a vital check on their “abuses of power” and restore a sense of sanity to politics by voting in November’s elections.

Representatives for Barack Obama have threatened to cancel the former president’s upcoming paid speech at a Denmark university if details of his speaking contract are released to the public. Obama will participate in a moderated question and answer session on Sept. 28 at the University of Southern Denmark before local business leaders, university students and local dignitaries, according to Business Kolding, the event’s organizer.

The White House did not invite the most senior American official charged with preventing terrorist attacks — the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey — to the three-day conference this week on countering violent extremism in the United States and abroad because the administration did not want the event too focused on law enforcement issues, according to senior American officials. But Mr. Comey’s Russian counterpart — Aleksandr V. Bortnikov, the director of the Russian Federal Security Service, the post-Soviet K.G.B. — was at the meeting, even though international human rights groups have repeatedly accused the Russian security service of unjustly detaining...

Do you know what Obama did in South Africa? You're not going to believe it. It's the biggest disgrace in the history of the U.S. presidency. But the mainstream media won't say a word- it's a total blackout. This is (as Obama would say) a "teachable moment." Ninety-plus percent of President TrumpÂ’s coverage by the U.S. mainstream media is negative. Terribly negative. Horribly negative. Remarkably negative. That same media adores and idolizes former President Obama. The difference in the way they are treated is remarkable. Remember it was Obama who first separated illegal alien parents from children. The media said...

The human animal seems hard-wired for tribalism, and the ties that bind are shaped by our compelling need to group together, obeying calls for loyalties and exclusions. Some groupings not only contribute to the gratifications of bonding, whether in family, clubs, choirs or loyalty to sports teams, but also provide the glue that holds a community together. But tribes become the "factions" that former President George Washington warned against in his Farewell Address, heightening differences and rivalries that the Founding Fathers hoped to dilute through checks and balances in the three branches of government. In the age of the internet,...

The corporate media has overwhelmingly praised Barack Obama’s speech in Johannesburg on Tuesday at an event commemorating the 100th anniversary of the birth of Nelson Mandela, calling it an “impassioned” defense of democracy, tolerance, equality and the liberal capitalist world order established after World War II. The reports have singled out Obama’s muted and indirect criticisms of Donald Trump’s “strongman politics” and the “utter loss of shame among political leaders” who are “caught in a lie and just double down and lie some more.” No notice is being taken in the press reports of two points in the rambling, 90-minute...