Former President of USA who is on a vacation was forced to talks against the new President Donald Trump. While Obama expressed his opposition to Trump’s latest policy announcement in fairly diplomatic terms, other members of his former White House team have been more forceful in expressing their dismay.
Obama, who is still on vacation with his family after leaving office this month, issued a statement through his spokesman Monday encouraging Americans to publicly protest President Donald Trump’s move to ban citizens from seven majority-Muslim countries – as well as refugees from across the globe – from entering the United States.
He also contested Trump’s claim that Friday’s executive order was based in part on decisions made during his administration, including identifying the same seven countries as harboring terrorism threats and slowing the processing of visas for Iraqis after evidence surfaced that two Iraqis seeking resettlement had been linked to terrorist activity in their homeland.
Even Roosevelt told Taft after returning from a vacation overseas that while some progressives were disappointed with the new administration’s direction, “I will make no speeches or say anything for two months. But I will keep my mind open . . . as I keep my mouth shut.”
“I don’t think it’s very common at all for an ex-president to be commenting on the performance of his successor,” presidential historian Robert Dallek said. “This current incumbent is so out of sync with what the normal behavior of a president is that it calls for ex-presidents to respond.”
During his last news conference, Obama sketched out the criteria for what would prompt him to speak out as a private citizen. He said threats to some of the key ideas he championed – including tolerance for minorities, immigrants and political dissent, as well as the need for broad voter participation among Americans – could prompt him to weigh into the public discourse.
“I put in that category if I saw systematic discrimination being ratified in some fashion. I put in that category explicit or functional obstacles to people being able to vote, to exercise their franchise,” he said. “I’d put in that category institutional efforts to silence dissent or the press. And for me, at least, I would put in that category efforts to round up kids who have grown up here, and for all practical purposes are American kids, and send them someplace else, when they love this country.”
Several journalists put in requests for comment to Obama’s office in the wake of the executive order, Lewis said, and while the former president is trying to take time off with his family, “he’s reading the news like everyone else.”
