Then-US President Barack Obama in 2016 embraces Mark Barden, whose son Daniel was killed in the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. After national tragedies, Obama and US President Donald Trump are a study in contrasts. Photo / Doug Mills, The New York Times
Before a crowd of thousands on Wednesday former United States President Barack Obama recalled one of the darkest moments of his presidency, when Dylann Roof, a white supremacist, killed nine black people at a church in South Carolina.
“As president of the United States, my response was not: Who may have influenced this troubled young man to engage in that kind of violence? And now let me go after my political opponents and use that,” he said.
Without mentioning US President Donald Trump by name, Obama delivered an indictment of the President’s approach to politics following the assassination of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk last week in Utah.
In the process, he demonstrated how much Trump had transformed the American presidency in the years since Obama walked out of the White House and Trump first walked in.
In his remarks, Obama said the job of an American president at a moment like this “is to constantly remind us of the ties that bind us together”.
In his own speeches as president during times of national tragedy, Obama echoed the efforts of past presidents of both parties, seeking in moments of national shock and grief to reach for the unity that eluded Americans during his eight years in office.
After a man shot Representative Gabrielle Giffords, (Democrat-Arizona), Obama called for a new era of civility.
After a man killed 26 people — 20 of them children — at a primary school in Newtown, Connecticut, Obama wiped away tears in the White House briefing room.
And when Roof tried to start a race war with the South Carolina church attack, Obama concluded his eulogy for the slain pastor by singing Amazing Grace.
In some ways, Obama’s actions in the wake of political and racial violence also proved divisive in a country that was already showing signs of the extreme polarisation that grips the political system today.
His attempts to pass sweeping gun control measures — especially after the mass shooting of children at Sandy Hook Elementary — largely failed because of a fierce backlash from conservative voters.
Many conservatives went on to become part of Trump’s “Make America Great Again” movement.
And Trump’s victories in 2016 and 2024 suggested that Obama may have misjudged the country’s desire for a president to play the role of uniter.
Instead, they elected Trump, who has made it clear that he sees such tragedies as opportunities for political and personal advantage.
And in an age when there is such a competition for attention, Trump’s style — bombastic, aggressive — has resonated in ways that a more traditional message has not.
“Conflict and division have been central to Donald Trump’s political project since the beginning,” said David Axelrod, a longtime adviser to Obama.
“In some ways, his political project relied on a reaction to Obama’s worldview and approach to the presidency and to politics, because one guy was literally preaching about our common humanity, and the other seems focused on dehumanising his political opponents.”
Almost immediately after Kirk’s killing, the President blamed the “radical left” and threatened a broad crackdown on his political opponents, predicated on the baseless argument that Democratic organisations are part of a violent conspiracy against conservative values.
Authorities have said that the 22-year-old suspect in Kirk’s killing, Tyler Robinson, deplored his views but that he acted alone.
A charging document filed by prosecutors in court said that Robinson’s mother had told investigators that her son had become “more pro-gay and trans-rights oriented” and that his partner, who was living with him, had been transitioning to being a woman from a man.
Trump and his allies have argued that the assassination of Kirk represents a different type of political violence, even distinguishing it from the recent killing of a Democratic state lawmaker in Minnesota and the shooting of Giffords in Arizona.
For that reason, Senator Lindsey Graham, (R-South Carolina) and a close ally of the President, said he had no concerns about how Trump had responded to Kirk’s death.
“Most Republicans see this as an attack to kill the Trump movement,” he said. “What happened in Minnesota was terrible. It wasn’t trying to kill a movement.”
In fact, law enforcement officials in Minnesota said the suspect in that killing possessed written papers that mentioned dozens of potential targets, some in neighbouring states, including politicians, civic leaders, abortion rights activists and Planned Parenthood centres.
Referring to the attempted assassinations of Trump as well as the attack on Kirk, Graham added: “They tried to blow the guy’s head off last year. They assassinated one of the most visible figures in the Maga movement. This is not normal political violence.”
As for Obama, Trump has criticised his predecessor for years.
In recent months, he has accused Obama of treason, referring to a report from Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, that sought to undermine the assessment that Russia favoured Trump in the 2016 election. A spokesperson for Obama called Trump’s allegations “bizarre”.
Abigail Jackson, a White House spokesperson, said in a statement that Obama “is the architect of modern political division in America”.
“Obama used every opportunity to sow division and pit Americans against each other, and following his presidency more Americans felt Obama divided the country than felt he united it,” she said.
In his remarks Tuesday evening, Obama pointed to several past Republican leaders as he portrayed the current president’s response as a departure from how presidents have seen their jobs as uniting the country after a tragedy.
“I think George W. Bush believed that,” Obama said. “I believe that people who I ran against — I know John McCain believed it. I know Mitt Romney believed it.
“What I’m describing is not a Democratic value or Republican value. It is an American value. And I think at moments like this, when tensions are high, then part of the job of the president is to pull people together.”
Obama also complimented Governor Spencer Cox of Utah, a Republican, for his handling of the shooting, noting that he disagreed with Cox on many issues but appreciated how he engages with his political opponents.
“He has shown, I think, that it is possible for us to disagree while abiding by a basic code of how we should engage in public debate,” he said.
Jeffrey Engel, who leads the Centre for Presidential History at Southern Methodist University, said Trump’s approach is a repudiation of traditional politics.
“Trump is rejecting everything about American politics since World War II which was based on sort of a mutual respect among factions, a sense that there was something more important for the country to strive forward than there was that could possibly divide them.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Written by: Tyler Pager
Photographs by: Doug Mills, Elizabeth Frantz
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