In a sharp and urgent message on Tuesday, former President Barack Obama sounded the alarm about the dangerous direction American politics is heading—specifically calling out Republicans for helping make Donald Trump’s behavior seem normal.
“This isn’t consistent with American democracy,” Obama told a crowd in Hartford, Connecticut. “It is consistent with autocracies.”
He didn’t mince words: “We’re not there yet completely, but I think that we are dangerously close to normalizing behavior like that.”
Obama was speaking with historian Heather Cox Richardson, during a public event where he warned that the core values that have guided the U.S. since World War II are being quietly undermined.
“If you follow regularly what is said by those who are in charge of the federal government right now, there is a weak commitment to what we understood… our understanding of how a liberal democracy is supposed to work,” he said.
The former president didn’t just aim his criticism at Trump. He called out the Republican Party for letting lies and conspiracies go unchecked.
“In 2020, one person won the election, and it wasn’t the guy complaining about it. And that’s just a fact, just like my inauguration had more people,” Obama said. “I say that, by the way, not because — I don’t care, but facts are important.”
He slammed GOP leaders for playing along with Trump’s false claims.
“In one of our major political parties, you have a whole bunch of people who know that’s not true but will pretend like it is,” he said. “And that is dangerous.”
Even with the grim warning, Obama said he’s not giving up on the country.
“I’m still the ‘hope’ guy,” he said. “It is important to be impatient with injustice and cruelty… there’s a healthy outrage we should be exhibiting.”
But he added that real change doesn’t come from outrage alone. “If you want to deliver on change, then it’s a game of addition, not subtraction,” Obama said. “You have to find ways to make common ground with people who don’t agree with you on everything but agree with you on some things.”
Still, his bottom line was clear: America is walking a dangerous line—and Republicans, by standing with Trump, are helping to erase it.
