Published on October 25, 2026
Barack Obama criticized “cruelty and corruption” during US President Donald Trump’s second term, as the former president campaigned for Democratic candidates in two Midwestern states.
Obama delivered scathing criticism of Trump on Saturday at a midterm campaign rally in Ohio, lambasting his successor’s foreign policy.
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“The current president has chosen to make a series of bad decisions,” said the 65-year-old Cleveland Democrat. “More importantly, he decided to start an unnecessary war that no one asked for,” he added, referring to the US-Israeli war against Iran.
Obama urged Ohioans to vote against the Republican administration, saying, “After two years of chaos, cruelty, corruption and incompetence, the likes of which we have not seen in the modern era, you have an opportunity to say, ‘Enough is enough.’
Later Saturday evening, Obama traveled to Michigan to campaign for Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed and Democratic gubernatorial candidate Jocelyn Benson.
At the Detroit rally, he presented the Nov. 3 vote as a “circuit breaker” to “at least curb some of the nonsense” of Trump’s presidency. “We have never seen a president excel at direct, on-your-own-cost scams like this,” Obama said.
“I have never seen a president so determined to sell favors like this,” he also said, adding that the Republican Party “seems to stand for corrupt government, or incompetent government, or no government.”
Obama ridiculed the Trump administration’s claims of victory against Iran. He argued that the war gave Iran more economic leverage because its threats to attack shipping in the Strait of Hormuz destabilized oil exporters.
“Iran now has a veto over the Strait of Hormuz, where oil passes through to reach the world,” Obama said.
Criticism of Ramaswamy’s ad
The former president also addressed the recent controversy in the Ohio gubernatorial race surrounding an attack ad by Republican candidate Vivek Ramaswamy against Democrat Amy Acton.
“Over the last few days, we’ve seen that there’s no line he won’t cross, no low point he won’t sink to,” Obama said of Ramaswamy. “I don’t know what happened where the standards of behavior are so low that someone would run an advert like that.”
In the ad, Donna Arthur, Acton’s mother, challenges her daughter’s account of a childhood of homelessness and sexual abuse at the hands of her stepfather, urging Ohioans not to vote for her.
Acton says she hasn’t seen her mother since 1978. Acton’s brother supported her account that her stepfather sexually abused her when she was a child. The stepfather, who died in 2004, was accused of rape.
Obama supported Acton, saying she had “spoken movingly about her painful childhood and all she experienced: abuse, neglect and homelessness.”
The former president shared the rally stage with Acton and former Ohio Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown.
Trump defended Ramaswamy’s ad Saturday, when he voted early in Florida.
Defending El-Sayed
Obama also condemned El-Sayed’s critics, suggesting they are using the 41-year-old politician’s name and his Muslim faith to tear him down.
“We’ve seen this movie before. I’ve been in it,” Obama said at a rally in Detroit. “I have a detailed birth certificate to prove it.”
He added: “Abdul is Michigan at its best. »
The former president objected to those who call El-Sayed “radical,” saying “Abdul shares my values.”
Obama remains the Democratic Party’s top motivator nearly a decade after leaving the White House. And he’s taking his power star on the road in the final days of the midterm elections, which will help determine the balance of power in American politics on November 3.
Obama will headline a Democratic Party rally in Georgia next week with Sen. Jon Ossoff and gubernatorial candidate Keisha Lance Bottoms.
Trump spoke in Georgia on Saturday.
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