Former Presidents Clinton, Obama, Biden and George W. Bush have barely uttered a word about President Trump’s actions a month into his second term, to the dismay of Democratic critics who say their voices are badly needed.
Those calling out for the ex-presidents to speak say Trump’s actions and the potential for him to bypass court orders should be red flags to the former occupants of the Oval Office.
“No one knows more about the importance of our presidents respecting separation of powers and showing restraint than former presidents,” Democratic strategist Joel Payne said. “Given Trump’s ongoing power grab, those voices and perspectives of our ex-presidents would be critical to the public discourse at this moment.”
“I don’t know what they’re waiting for,” one former senior aide to Obama said. “The time isn’t when Trump ignores court rulings. The time is now.”
Trump’s first month in office has been a whirlwind of activity in which he has sought to dramatically reduce the federal workforce while giving the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), led by Elon Musk, access to sensitive government payment systems. He has also sought to change birthright citizenship and dramatically curb federal spending.
Clinton, Biden and Obama repeatedly warned of the risks to the nation if Trump was reelected.
Biden — who said he decided to run for office in 2020 because democracy was on the line — warned days before he left office about the threat a second Trump administration posed.
In Biden’s farewell address, just days before Trump entered office again, Biden warned of an oligarchy “taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power, and influence that literally threatens our entire democracy, our basic rights and freedoms, and a fair shot for everyone to get ahead.” He vowed to stay ‘engaged.’
Since leaving office in 2017 and passing the baton to Trump, Obama has also frequently spoken up about democracy.
In December, a month after the 2024 election, Obama renewed a call for pluralism — finding a way to live alongside individuals and groups who are different — and spoke about what’s at stake without invoking Trump’s name.
“Because the alternative is what we’ve seen here in the United States and in many democracies around the globe,” Obama said at his annual forum on the topic. “Not just more gridlock and just public cynicism, but an increasing willingness on the part of politicians and their followers to violate democratic norms, to do anything they can to get their way, to use the power of the state to target critics and journalists and political rivals, and to even resort to violence in order to gain and hold onto power.
“We’ve seen that movie a lot,” he said, adding that he wasn’t “going to pretend that there are easy answers.”
Since Jan. 20, however, the former presidents have mostly been quiet.
When Trump announced earlier this month that he was shuttering the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), Obama did take to the social platform X to make his voice heard, linking to an opinion piece in The New York Times.
“USAID has been fighting disease, feeding children, and promoting goodwill around the world for six decades,” Obama wrote in the post. “As this article makes clear, dismantling this agency would be a profound foreign policy mistake.”
“Congress should resist,” Obama added.
Still, the other former presidents have refrained from weighing in on any of Trump’s actions.
Some say Bush would have the most powerful voice as a Republican, but he has made it a point over the years never to “step on” the current president, as one former Bush aide put it.
“It’s out of respect to the office,” the former Bush aide said. “It’s just not his style.”
Generally speaking, ex-presidents are loathe to publicly criticize the actions of their successors, at least outside election season. Trump, in his four years out of office, was a notable exception.
In that vein, Democratic strategist Lynda Tran said “in the age of Trump, it’s more important than ever that we respect and adhere to long-standing traditions” to not debate with the current leader of the country.
“We should have faith in the other branches of government — and the advocacy and justice movements — to take action to push back where appropriate.”
Susan Del Percio, a veteran Republican strategist who does not support Trump, said it’s a fruitless effort for the former presidents to speak out against him.
“They can’t, and they know it,” Del Percio said. “If they lend their voices to the conversation, they’ll just be taken down by Trump. If they speak out, it’ll be for the history books, not to affect the Trump presidency now.”
“No one can influence Trump right now, because he doesn’t care what anyone thinks,” Del Percio continued. “It seems to me, given his actions, he acts as if he knows best.”
“There’s no influencing,” she added. “These presidents know that; if anything, they understand better than anybody the power of the presidency.”
Biden should not be included in the list of people to speak up.
In that vein, Democratic strategist Lynda Tran said “in the age of Trump, it’s more important than ever that we respect and adhere to long-standing traditions” to not debate with the current leader of the country.
Hey Lynda, do us a favor right quick and go jump up your own ass.
‘the age of Trump’ get fucking FUCKED
Imagine believing these people ever stood for anything besides the violent enforcement of capitalism. They’re all Trumps.
A group of mask-on Trumps if you would.
Stop waiting for someone else to do something. Barack Obama isn’t gonna fly down from his Fortress of Solitude and solve your problem. Go out and do it yourself! Organize. Protest. Strike. Resist. This is your country and your future. Fight for it!
I personally, am dismayed that the democrats aren’t fistfighting in congress.
Democrats are also a neoliberal right-wing party (if a little more moderate), why would they be opposition?
They didn’t say it would be Democrats fist-fighting Republicans…
Sounds more like progressive Dem on corporate Dem action to me.
Sounds more like progressive Dem on corporate Dem action to me.
Happens every day on .world honestly
You said it Eugene Debs’ Ghost.
So they could stay in power?
It’s because they’ve reached coasting levels of wealth and/or age.
Why ruffle feathers and incite death threats or make life worse for their kids?
As other comments have stated, we cannot rely on them, we must take matters into our own hands.
Note: I disagree with their mindset. Much to my family’s dismay, I’ll continue to be vocal and fight, because it’s the right thing to do - not because it’s the comfortable thing to do.
On the one hand, at least a handful of them were on the campaign trail warning of such things. Even Darth Va-- I mean Dick Cheney came out and said what was happening was dangerous.
The country voted for him anyway (maybe?? feels a lot like 2004…) and so there’s probably a level of diminishing returns by continuing to talk.
On the other hand, anyone who thought the Democrat establishment full of millionaires were really going to bend over to save the common riff-raff is probably lying to themselves.
On the other hand, anyone who thought the Democrat establishment full of millionaires were really going to bend over to save the common riff-raff is probably lying to themselves.
This is a recent realization for me, and it’s been a tough swallow.
My two cents is that most former presidents should be silent. Especially Biden.
The one who shouldn’t is Obama, the only former president who is actually viewed favorably in America.
Perhaps you haven’t meant Trump voters. The mere mention of Obama sends them into a spitting rage. Of course they can’t explain why, just that he’s evil and destroyed our country.
Bush is the only one that could give them a tiny shake, but they’ll just say he’s slipping.
I’m sure their explanation would simply be “DEI”
Especially the dead ones should be silent, that would scare the crap out of me.
Let’s all just take a page from Bernie and AOC and stop pretending the establishment Dems give an F about average Americans or even minorities.
They don’t want to wind up in camps.
If they think this will protect them from that they are fools.
They’ll be fine. They know they’ll be fine. They got into politics to be bought and bought they have been, pariah leftists like Sanders and AOC who rejected the bribe checks excluded.
As always this is class warfare, with propaganda twisting it into a narrative that keeps the poors beating on each other rather than looking up.
No wealthy wife or mistress will ever lose access to abortion, no wealthy individual access to Amazing Healthcare.
That’s why I pity Republican voters, useful idiots, and move on. Americans are poorly educated on purpose to be more compliant laborers, those who were average and below that couldn’t rise above that became them. No capacity to think or reason critically, empathy beaten out of them by media that preyed on those that rely on emotion in lieu of problem solving skills.
As ever, the enemies aren’t our more deluded fellow poors, or the well bribed middle managers in Congress. The oldest rule of finding who the real enemy is still applies: those holding the biggest
bag of cashstock portfolio when all carnage’s dust settles.We need to do more to Wall Street than occupy it, or get comfortable, because while the capital markets exist and run the nations meant to keep them in check, nothing can improve ever.
As ever, the enemies aren’t our more deluded fellow poors, or the well bribed middle managers in Congress.
That uh, that all depends. When they become brownshirts for this fucking clown turd they are our enemies. When they start inflicting violence upon innocent people they certainly are our enemies.
I mean sure. But you aren’t solving anything fighting them. They’re literally the Canon fodder of the enemy. They were made, poor stupid gullible emotional bastards, to keep you busy fighting them so you never get to those who made them. That’s the point. Poors fighting poors is so much easier than ankle chains and whips, more insideous than overt Jim Crowesque dictates. Trick the slaves into keeping one another down.
The head of the beast, and that is easily identifiable by net worth as I mentioned, cares exactly as much about those brown shirts lives and manufactured hatreds as you do if you have to end them: not at all.
Their skinhead army is literally cultivated by for profit media propaganda and there to absorb the bullets meant for the capitalists. Until you’re aiming for the true enemy, you’re playing their game.
Those capitalists wouldn’t let those skinheads eat their purebread dog’s organic dog food if they were dying of hunger. Unlike their useful idiots they feed hate, capitalists are only emotional about the person they love, themselves, beyond themselves, they’re reptilian sociopaths. Unlike the loud brownshirts, our real enemy doesn’t care about any of our lives enough to hate us. We’re just capital batteries to be used up and tossed out.
I understand there’s a hierarchy and all, but the henchmen aren’t off the hook is my point.
Treating the Neoliberals as allies since their former opposition got them on the take in the 70s and 80s is why we’re here. The right leads the charge into fascism every cycle, and their “opposition” meets them in the new middle, but with affirmation ribbons instead of scapegoats, all the while both enabling murder for profit and mass homelessness to threaten the laborers.
The Democrat party doesn’t care if it loses. That’s part of the grift. What it cares about is losing its half of the corpo bribe gravy train, which is why They would be treating a spoiler President like AOC the way we wish they were treating Trump.
It’s all been a game of social symptom good cop/bad cop while defending the oligarchs from the needs and demands of the people they consume by stoking and magnifying social division on issues that don’t effect private profits, which is why half of America generally revels in the pain of the other half. Every bully pulpit, from for profit “news” to political podiums have been demanding we hate one another for half a century, and propaganda works.
Divide and profit. We need hot revolution starting with doing so much more to the capital markets than occupy them.
Or more likely, we’ll continue to submit to this Hell of greed and antisocial cruelty like cowards until the planet itself handles the problem in a couple decades. Either way, I’m glad this situation can’t continue for hundreds or thousands of years.
Unchecked capitalism is always a race to fascism. Neoliberalism opens the door for fascism. Putting the wellbeing of our beloved economy aka our robber barons over human life as both parties proudly do can only lead to dehumanizion when profit/growth/metastasis expectations aren’t being met. Powerless people to blame for society’s suffering rather than the greed class that is responsible.
If you still think the Neoliberals are some part of anyone’s salvation at this late hour, you haven’t been paying attention. The reason they have extra no plan now is because their bosses the oligarchs have basically cut out their middlemen middle managers in the executive branch and are just looting the country themselves. No neoliberal is going to do a god damned thing, Trump and Musk represent their actual bosses, and they probably own some Tesla Stock.
https://apnews.com/article/business-nancy-pelosi-congress-8685e82eb6d6e5b42413417f3d5d6775
And yeah, I voted for Harris out of harm reduction, because affirmation ribbons in oligarch hell is technically better than scapegoating in oligarch hell, and that is the extent of our “Freedom” since Reagan.
Clinton, Obama, Bush all want the status quo. And now the status quo is NAZIs.
I know they’ve changed a lot in their almost 30 years of existence…
But there’s a certain irony to the head of an organization literally named “Move on” and created for the explicit purpose of convincing people a president lying under oath was a “nothingburger” and we should all just let it go and move on, now complaining that that same president is not openly criticizing the current president is wild.
Like, it’s definitely morbidly funny, but how the fuck can people not realize that ever since Dems pivoted to neoliberalism it’s been a race to the bottom?
A small lie used to be enough that a president would be impeached, we all excused it, and 30 years later anything is excusable.
This shit ain’t working, we desperately need to try something else.
Lowering our standards just results in the other side throwing theirs out the window. We can’t beat conservatives in a race to the bottom, they don’t even need to hold their nose, they enjoy the smell.
The people who believe in the institutions the most are blinded into not acting to save those institutions, believing that it will not succumb to tyranny.
