In what is his strongest attack yet on President Donald Trump, former President Barack Obama on Tuesday served up a fiery speech in the battleground state of Florida, calling his successor lazy, criticizing him for not having a plan, and for his incessant tweeting.
At one point President Obama, campaigning for Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, slammed President Trump’s affinity for murderous dictators.
“He said that Putin of Russia, Xi of China, and Kim Jong Un of North Korea want him to win. We know,” Obama mocked. “We know because you’ve been giving them whatever they want for the last four years. Of course they want you to win. That’s not a good thing. You shouldn’t brag.”
Obama also attacked Trump for not taking the deadly coronavirus seriously.
“What’s his closing argument? That people are too focused on COVID. He said this at one of his rallies. ‘COVID COVID COVID’ he’s complaining. He’s jealous of COVID’s media coverage,” Obama mocked. “If he had been focused on COVID from the beginning, cases wouldn’t be reaching new record highs this week.”
And Obama mocked Trump’s claim there was nothing he could have done differently to responds to the coronavirus pandemic that’s taken close to 230,000 lives in the U.S.
“You can’t think of anything you might be doing differently?” Obama asked. “Like, maybe you shouldn’t have gotten on TV and suggested we might inject bleach to cure COVID?”
He also slammed Trump for returning to the first controversy of the Trump presidency: how big the crowd was at his 2017 inauguration.
“Who is thinking about that right now? Nobody except him.”