Source: Meg Oliphant / Getty
loosening his tie when talking about the current administration.
On Thursday,
during an interview at Hamilton College, he acknowledged that he hasn’t done many speaking engagements lately. But now, with the microphone in hand, he was critical about the Trump Administration’s first few months, which included sweeping crackdowns on immigration, firing thousands to streamline the government, and the implications of higher tariffs.
Even he knows that none of those moves would have worked during his administration.
“So, this is the first time I’ve been speaking publicly for a while,” Obama said in an on-stage interview at the upstate New York school. “I’ve been watching for a little bit. Imagine if I had done any of this,” Obama said, later adding: “It’s unimaginable that the same parties that are silent now would have tolerated behavior like that from me, or a whole bunch of my predecessors.”
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Obama doesn’t think the tariffs are “going to be good for America,” but he’s more concerned with Trump wielding his power over colleges and universities.
The most recent is the
Trump administration stripping Columbia University of $400 million in federal grants and requiring the institution to place its Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies Department under “academic receivership for a minimum of five years.”
Government officials are also looking to
pull similar stunts with Brown University, which is over $510 million, and reportedly did the same for
Harvard University, Obama’s law school alma mater.
“I’m more deeply concerned with a federal government that threatens universities if they don’t give up students who are exercising their right to free speech,” Obama told college kids in the audience. “The idea that a White House can say to law firms, if you represent parties that we don’t like, we’re going to pull all our business or bar you from representing people effectively. Those kinds of – that kind of behavior is contrary to the basic compact we have as Americans.”
