Obama slams Trump’s ‘cruelty and corruption’ as he rallies Democrats

Barack Obama has criticised the “cruelty and corruption” during US President Donald Trump’s second term, as the former president campaigned for Democratic candidates in two Midwestern states.

Obama delivered scathing criticism of Trump on Saturday at a midterm election campaign rally in Ohio, slamming his successor’s foreign policies.

“The current president chose to make a series of bad decisions,” the 65-year-old Democrat said in Cleveland. “Most importantly, he decided to start an unnecessary war that nobody asked for,” he added, referring to the US-Israel war on Iran.

Obama urged Ohioans to vote against the Republican administration, saying: “After two years of chaos and cruelty and corruption and incompetence, the likes of which we have not seen in the modern era, you get a chance to say, ‘Enough is enough’.”

Later on Saturday evening, Obama headed to Michigan to campaign for Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed and Democratic gubernatorial candidate Jocelyn Benson.

At the Detroit rally, he framed the November 3 vote as a “circuit breaker” to “at least rein in some of the foolishness” of Trump’s presidency. “We have never seen a president excel in straight-up grifting, ⁠on your dime, like this,” Obama said.

“Never seen a president so intent ⁠on selling favours like this,” he also said, adding that the Republican Party “seems to stand for corrupt government, or inept government, or no government”.

Obama ridiculed the Trump ⁠administration’s claims of victory against Iran. He argued that the war has given Iran more economic leverage because its threats to attack shipping in the Strait of Hormuz have unsettled oil exporters.

“Iran now has veto power over the Strait of Hormuz, ‌where oil goes through to get to the world,” Obama said.

The former president also addressed the recent controversy in Ohio’s gubernatorial race surrounding an attack advertisement by Republican candidate Vivek Ramaswamy against Democrat Amy Acton.

“In recent days, we’ve seen there is no line he will not cross, no low he will not sink to,” Obama said of Ramaswamy. “I don’t know what’s happened where the standards of behaviour are so low that somebody could run an ad like that.”

In the advertisement, Donna Arthur, Acton’s mother, disputes her daughter’s account of a childhood involving homelessness and ⁠⁠⁠⁠sexual abuse by her stepfather, urging Ohioans not to vote for her.

Acton says she has not seen her mother since 1978. Acton’s brother has supported her account of being sexually abused by her stepfather when she was a child. The stepfather, who died in 2004, was charged with rape.

Obama backed Acton, saying that she has “spoken movingly about her painful childhood and all she’s experienced: abuse, neglect and homelessness”.

The former president shared the rally stage with Acton and Ohio’s former Democratic senator, Sherrod Brown.

Trump defended the Ramaswamy advertisement on Saturday, when he cast his ballot early in Florida.

Obama also condemned critics of El-Sayed, suggesting they are using the 41-year-old politician’s name and Muslim faith to tear him down.

“We have seen this movie before. I starred in it,” Obama told a rally in Detroit. “I’ve got a long-form birth certificate to prove it.”

He added, “Abdul is as Michigan as it gets.”

The former president pushed back against those who call El-Sayed a “radical”, declaring that “Abdul shares my values”.

Obama remains the Democratic Party’s best motivator nearly a decade after leaving the White House. And he is taking his star power on the road in the final days of the midterm elections, which will help determine the balance of power in US politics on November 3.

Obama will headline a Democratic Party rally in Georgia next week with Senator Jon Ossoff and gubernatorial candidate Keisha Lance Bottoms.