Featured Image Credit: ROBERTO SCHMIDT/AFP via Getty Images
Topics: Barack Obama, Donald Trump, Politics, US News
Niamh Shackleton
Topics: Barack Obama, Donald Trump, Politics, US News
Barack Obama is urging Democrats to stand up for their beliefs amid the Trump administration's unpopular policies.
It's not new information that some of Donald Trump's decisions haven't been well received by Americans.
Approval ratings regarding how Americans feel about Trump's running on the country have been released in recent weeks and it's safe to say Trump won't be resharing them online.
In one poll where 523 adults were quizzed between June 1 and 30, it was found that less than half of Americans approve of the POTUS' running of the US. This left Trump with an overall approval rating of -7.
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For Democrats in particular that aren't pleased with how the country is being ran, however, Obama has told them to 'do something' about it.
Speaking at a private fundraiser on Friday (July 11), Obama said: "I think it’s going to require a little bit less navel-gazing and a little less whining and being in fetal positions. And it’s going to require Democrats to just toughen up."
He continued (via CNN): "You know, don’t tell me you’re a Democrat, but you’re kind of disappointed right now, so you’re not doing anything. No, now is exactly the time that you get in there and do something.
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"Don’t say that you care deeply about free speech and then you’re quiet. No, you stand up for free speech when it’s hard. When somebody says something that you don’t like, but you still say, 'You know what, that person has the right to speak'."
Obama added: "What’s needed now is courage."
The former president has previously expressed his concerns about the US becoming an autocracy under Trump. This is where the head of state, in this case Trump, holds absolute power.
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"If you follow regularly what is said by those who are in charge of the federal government right now, there is a weak commitment to what we understood — and not just my generation, at least since World War II — our understanding of how a liberal democracy is supposed to work," he warned in June.
Obama went on: "What we’re seeing right now … is not consistent with American democracy. It is consistent with autocracies. It is consistent with Hungary under Orbán. It's consistent with places that hold elections but do not otherwise observe what we think of [as] a fair system in which everybody's voice matters, and people have a seat at the table, and there are checks and balances, and nobody's above the law."
He concluded that while the US wasn't at this stage yet at this time off his remarks, however, Obama said that America was 'dangerously close' to becoming an autocracy.