Peter Hasson of the Daily Caller documents the 44th president’s repeated breaks with a longstanding precedent.
Former President Barack Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama have bashed his successor, President Donald Trump, a dozen times since leaving the White House on Jan. 20, 2017.
In criticizing his successor — and doing so repeatedly — Obama has abandoned the precedent set by previous presidents. He and his wife have slammed Trump a dozen times since leaving office.
Obama was out of the White House just 10 days before he took a shot at his successor. Obama criticized Trump on Jan. 30 over the president’s travel ban targeting seven terror-prone countries. Obama was “heartened” by liberal protests against the travel ban, the former president said through a spokesman.
Michelle Obama took her first shot at President Trump four months into his first term. She bashed the Trump administration on May 12, 2017, for scaling back federal rules aimed at forcing students to eat healthier lunches — a policy she championed as first lady.
On May 25, 2017, Obama took a shot at Trump’s signature policy proposal — a wall across the US-Mexico border — while speaking before a crowd of 70,000 in Germany. “In this new world we live in, we can’t isolate ourselves — we can’t hide behind a wall,” the former president said. USA Today described his remarks as a “clear message” to Trump.