Former President Barack Obama dusted off his message of “hope” and “change” to breathe new life into the Democratic National Convention, reviving his longtime mockery of Donald Trump.
The first black president introduced another candidate with a “funny name,” then compared Donald Trump to an annoying neighbor and promoted Kamala Harris as his new successor.
He did so while lambasting Trump for “the childish nicknames and the crazy conspiracy theories. This weird obsession with crowd size,” he said mockingly, drawing roars from the crowd at Chicago’s United Center.
It was a line that brought to mind Trump’s recent bizarre claim that a large Harris crowd was fake, as well as Trump’s dubious claim that he had a larger inauguration crowd than Obama — not to mention long-running jokes about the size of Trump’s hands that Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) briefly latched onto during the 2016 campaign.
“We all knew what that hand gesture meant @BarackObama,” posted former CNN host Don Lemon, who took the comment in a more suggestive way.
At a convention where a series of speeches attacked Trump for his policies and videos alternated between ridiculing him and calling him a serious threat, Obama weighed in. “We don’t need four more years of bluster and chaos. We’ve seen that movie — and we all know the sequel is usually worse,” Obama said to applause.
The former president put a new spin on his 2008 campaign slogan, giving a stamp of approval to Harris and her candidate.
Former President Barack Obama ridiculed Donald Trump’s “weird obsession” with crowd size in a speech to Congress, calling for a “passing of the torch” to Kamala Harris
“Yes, she can!” Obama shouted.
He got the convention crowd on its feet when he brought back other favorite lines. “Don’t boo: vote,” he told the crowd.
“I don’t know about you, but I’m feeling energized,” he said early, reminding Democrats of the joy he felt as he headed from South Carolina to his historic race for the White House. “I feel ready to go,” he added.
Obama joked about the dangers of following his wife Michelle Obama after her bombshell opening speech, which nearly overshadowed his own with her biting comment about Trump.
“Who’s going to tell him that the job he’s applying for now might be a black job?” she asked.
The former president then tried his own brand of sharp humor, one that has irked Trump in the past.
“Here’s a 78-year-old billionaire who hasn’t stopped whining about his problems since he went off his golden escalator nine years ago. It’s a constant stream of complaining and grievances that have actually gotten worse now that he’s afraid of losing to Kamala.”
“I heard someone compare Trump the other day to that neighbor who runs his leaf blower outside your window every minute of the day,” he joked. “Coming from a neighbor, that’s exhausting. Coming from a president, it’s just plain dangerous,” said Obama, who owns mansions in Washington, Chicago and Hawaii.
Obama may have been overshadowed by his wife Michelle Obama, and joked about the challenge of continuing after her
Obama’s attacks on Trump and praise for Harris brought the crowd to its feet
He said Trump sees the president as merely “a means to an end.”
“He wants the middle class to pay the price for another huge tax cut that would primarily benefit him and his rich friends,” Obama said.
The criticism came after Trump offered some unusually kind words to Obama and Michelle Obama, preempting the attack.
Obama’s other mission was to “pass the torch” and he spent much of his speech building up Kamala Harris.
Obama, who rose to fame in part thanks to his 2004 convention speech, initially did so by pairing Harris with another unlikely politician: himself.
“I am hopeful because this Congress has always been very good for children with funny names who believe in a country where everything is possible,” he said near the beginning of his speech.
“We are ready for a President Kamala Harris,” he said.
It was another seal of approval after his former advisers helped engineer the extraordinary shake-up at the top of the standings.
Obama raved about his former buddy President Joe Biden, who was vacationing in California 24 hours after his own speech at the party convention, which lasted past midnight.
Obama’s aides were among the key figures who urged Biden to leave after his disastrous debate. The episode reignited old tensions after Obama encouraged Biden not to run in 2016, while Hillary Clinton prepared for her own ultimately failed campaign.
Obama called his own decision to choose Biden as his running mate “one of my best,” praising his “empathy and decency” as well as his “hard-won resilience.” But it wasn’t enough to carry him from the primaries to the party convention.
“History will remember Joe Biden as a president who defended democracy in a moment of great danger. I am proud to call him my president, but even prouder to call him my friend,” he said.
He praised Biden for “putting aside his own ambitions for the good of the country” and said he was a “steady” leader “at a time when the other party had turned into a cult of personality.”
“The torch has been passed. Now it’s up to all of us to fight for the America we believe in,” Obama said.
Obama, a former organizer, also tried to warn the crowd, saying that “despite all the demonstrations and memes, this is still going to be a close race in a country that is deeply divided.” He warned that there would be low points.
And the famous speaker who is sometimes accused of being a professor also weighed in on some social commentary. “We go on our phones looking for approval from strangers … and then we wonder why we feel so alone,” Obama said.
