Subject: Obama
A thoughtful Obama speaks about our current state of affairs.

Some quotes from the NYT article about Obama’s thoughts and a gifted link below.

I am reminded of the classic quote from one of our Founding Fathers, Benjamin Franklin:

"You have a republic, if you can keep it.”

Selected quotes the article:

Former President Barack Obama suggested on Tuesday that President Trump and his allies were using the assassination of the conservative activist Charlie Kirk to stoke division and silence debate about Mr. Kirk’s ideas.

“When I hear not just our current president, but his aides, who have a history of calling political opponents ‘vermin,’ enemies who need to be ‘targeted,’ that speaks to a broader problem that we have right now, and something that we’re going to have to grapple with — all of us,” Mr. Obama said.

Mr. Obama called Mr. Kirk’s death “horrific and a tragedy.” But he said that Americans should still be able to debate Mr. Kirk’s ideas, noting several areas where he disagreed with the conservative activist.

Drawing more of a contrast with Mr. Trump, he referred to his own presidency and to past Republican leaders he said had believed in unifying a fractious country.

“I think George W. Bush believed that,” Mr. Obama said. “I believe that people who I ran against — I know John McCain believed it. I know Mitt Romney believed it. What I’m describing is not a Democratic value or Republican value. It is an American value. And I think at moments like this, when tensions are high, then part of the job of the president is to pull people together.”

At one point, Mr. Obama mentioned Dylann S. Roof, the white supremacist who killed nine Black people in 2015 at a church in Charleston, S.C.

“As president of the United States, my response was not: Who may have influenced this troubled young man to engage in that kind of violence? And now let me go after my political opponents and use that,” he said.

He has also criticized Democrats for failing to speak out against Mr. Trump and his policies. In July, at a private fund-raiser for the Democratic National Committee held at the home of Gov. Phil Murphy of New Jersey, the former president argued that Democrats had been intimidated by Mr. Trump and his administration.

“It’s going to require a little bit less navel-gazing and a little less whining and being in fetal positions,” Mr. Obama said at the event. “And it’s going to require Democrats to just toughen up.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/0...