Former President Barack Obama has attacked the Trump administration over the Iran war and high consumer prices as he hit the campaign trail for Democrats ahead of the US midterm elections.
“This election is our last best chance to at least rein in some of the foolishness of this administration,” Obama told crowds in Ohio on Saturday.
Meanwhile, US President Donald Trump touted his administration’s immigration and tariff policies at a rally in Georgia, telling supporters “we’re in the golden age of America”.
The midterm elections on 3 November will decide which party controls Congress for the rest of Trump’s term, and therefore how easy it is for the president to carry out his plans.
Early voting has already begun and Trump cast his ballot on Saturday in Florida alongside his wife First Lady Melania Trump.
Speaking on Saturday in Ohio and Michigan, Obama targeted Trump and his cabinet members, at one point mocking the president’s attempt to redecorate the White House.
“After two years of chaos and cruelty and corruption and incompetence, the likes of which we have not seen in the modern era, you get a chance to say, ‘enough is enough,'” the former president said in Cleveland.
Obama said he sympathised with voters who rejected Democrats in 2024 over economic and inflation concerns following the Covid pandemic. But he said Trump had only himself to blame for the current state of the economy.
“If you thought everything was too expensive before ‘you know who’,” he said, referring to Trump without using his name, “everything is more expensive now”.
Trump, meanwhile, acknowledged that oil prices were “temporarily high” but said “our country is getting stronger and stronger all the time, and those pump prices are going to come down”.
The Republican president has faced significant pressure to lower fuel prices, which have jumped due to the wars in Iran and Ukraine.
Talking up the economy, Trump told the crowd in Perry “we’re taking in massive amounts of money through tariffs”, and repeated his pledge to offer every adult American a $5,000 (£3,700) payout if Republicans win both chambers of Congress.
He also took aim at the Democrats, telling the crowd they would “loot your wealth” and “annihilate your borders”.
Using derogatory language, he accused the Democrats of trying to open up immigration from Libya, Yemen, Haiti and Somalia – countries which he described as “terror-infested”.
Describing a previous meeting with several senators, he recalled: “I said, ‘Why do we always have to take people from shithouse countries? Why can’t we take people from, like, well… Norway, Sweden? Why not Denmark?'”
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