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Former United States President Barack Obama criticized Donald Trump and cautioned against complacency, despite favorable opinion polls, during his first public rally in support of Democratic challenger Joe Biden ahead of next month’s presidential election.
At the drive-in in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, one of the few states expected to decide the election, Obama lashed out at Trump’s behavior, declaring him “incapable of taking work seriously.”
But it also issued a stark reminder of 2016, when opinion polls showed Hillary Clinton as the clear favorite, only for her and her supporters to be stunned by Trump’s victory on Election Day.
“We cannot be complacent. I don’t care about the polls,” the former president said during two terms at the demonstration in front of a baseball stadium.
“There were a lot of polls last time. It didn’t work. Because a lot of people stayed home. And they got lazy and complacent. Not this time. Not in this election.”
He told his supporters that the stakes were high to have four more years of Trump leading the nation, seeking to contrast his successor, a Republican real estate mogul and former reality TV star, with his former vice president.
“This is not a reality show. It is reality,” Obama said.
“And the rest of us have had to live with the consequences of him showing that he is incapable of taking work seriously.”
He noted that Trump has trampled on previous rules, including his new conspiracy theory tweets, and accused him of mishandling America’s response to the coronavirus pandemic.
“Our democracy is not going to work if the people who are supposed to be our leaders lie every day and make things up,” he said.
“And we just get numb.”
Earlier, at a roundtable with organizers from the black community in Philadelphia, he said that “the pandemic would have been difficult for any president, we had not seen something like this in 100 years.”
The coronavirus has killed more than 220,000 people in the United States and seriously injured the world’s largest economy, prompting harsh criticism of the president’s handling of the crisis.
“We can’t afford another four years of this,” Obama said.
While Obama was in Pennsylvania, Trump visited North Carolina, another of the battlefield states, where he enraged the crowd with popular campaign themes such as his law and order platform.
“If Biden wins, the protesters burning flags in the street will run their federal government,” Trump told spectators gathered at a municipal airport in the city of Gastonia.
The 77-year-old Biden had no public events on his schedule for the third day in a row, prompting the 74-year-old Trump to accuse his Democratic opponent of “hiding.”
The Biden campaign said it was preparing for the second and final debate against Trump in Nashville, Tennessee, later today.
Obama stayed on the sidelines during the Democratic presidential primaries, but gave his support to Biden after his former vice president won the party’s nomination.
Biden’s campaign hopes that the star power of America’s first black president will help boost turnout among young voters and African Americans, who are key to Democratic hopes of regaining the White House.
African Americans voted in record numbers for Obama in 2008 and 2012, but their turnout declined in 2016, a factor that contributed to Trump’s victory over Clinton.
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