Featured Image Credit: Getty Images/Anadolu
Topics: Barack Obama, Donald Trump, Politics, US News, Election, Republicans
Liv Bridge
Topics: Barack Obama, Donald Trump, Politics, US News, Election, Republicans
Barack Obama has made a bombshell admission about the current Trump administration during his speech.
The former Democratic 44th President of the United States appeared before a rally in Newark on Saturday (November 1) in a bid to lend his support to New Jersey gubernatorial candidate Mikie Sherrill.
As election day inches closer, Sherrill currently holds a mere single digit lead against her Republican rival, Jack Ciattarelli, according to public polling.
While delivering his passionate speech at the event, Obama appeared to make a chilling admission about the current Trump administration, departing from his usual diplomatic reserve.
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The former POTUS said the Republican's policies are 'worse than even I expected.'
“It is not as if we didn’t see some of this coming," Obama said. "I will admit it is worse than even I expected, but I did warn you all. You can run the tape.
“Any by the way, he warned you too, because he said what he would do.
"But the fact is there were plenty of people who voted for Trump and Republicans anyway,” he continued. “And it wasn’t because they wanted to give up the right to free speech or see public health systems torn down, but because they were understandably frustrated with inflation and gas prices and the difficulty of affording a home and worries about their children’s future.”
Obama added in his scathing criticism: "We’ve got a president who deployed the national guard in American cities and claimed to be stopping crime waves that don’t actually exist.
"We’ve got masked ICE agents in unmarked vans pulling people in off the streets, including US citizens, on the suspicion that they don’t look like real Americans.
“It’s like every day is Halloween except it’s all tricks and no treats,” Obama said in reference to reported immigration raids in Chicago and Los Angeles on October 31.
Meanwhile, backing Abigail Spanberger in Norfolk, Virginia, he also made digs at President Trump - particularly touching on his recent White House renovations.
"As for the president, he has been focused on critical issues like paving over the Rose Garden so folks don’t get mud on their shoes, and gold-plating the Oval Office and building a $300m ballroom,” Obama said.
“So Virginia, here’s the good news. If you can’t visit a doctor, don’t worry, he will save you a dance.”
His comments come as the federal government's full scale shutdown surpassed its first full month, starting on October 1.
So far, there appears to be no end in sight to the feud with Democrats demanding to extend health insurance subsidies amid Trump's ongoing assault on the budget and national spending.
Obama's troubling words also came amid tensions around the up-coming Election Day on Tuesday (November 4).
Democrats have high hopes Sherrill will win next week, with an almost 860,000-voter-registration advantage over the opposition, while a Suffolk University poll also placed her with a four-point lead over her opponent.
However, the most recent Emerson College Polling/P1X11/The Hill poll last week revealed Democrats have a narrow margin, only being ahead of Ciattarelli 49 percent to 48 percent.
Micah Rasmussen, the director of the Rebovich Institute for New Jersey Politics at Rider University, told the Mirror US: "The question is whether or not Republicans are doing enough this time to completely breach it or partially breach it.
"I think even among the most nervous of Democrats, there’s no question that Republicans have to have a very big Election Day in order to be able to overcome what could be as much as 250 or 275,000 vote-margin for Democrats at this point."
As for Spanberger, polls suggest the Democrat has 14-point lead against Republican governor, Winsome Earle-Sears.