As DOJ Special Counsel Jack Smith’s bombshell, 37-count indictment begins to peel back the veil on the true extent of Donald J. Trump’s unending corruption against this nation, Donald’s own predecessor has now spoken out with his response to the prospect of a man actively running for the United States presidency while simultaneously facing literal dozens of formal criminal indictments, on both a state and federal level, many of which are felony offenses that carry steep prison sentences, with more expected to come.
America’s 44th President Barack Obama recently spoke with CNN’s Chief International Anchor Christiane Amanpour in a new, exclusive interview that aired this week, in which they spoke about Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential re-election campaign, as it coincides with the most massive legal peril he’s ever faced in his life. Obama noted that, while the prospect of an indicted presidential candidate is troubling, and far from a good look for the country as a whole, the former POTUS said that, in the scheme of things, he’s far more concerned about the relentless attacks we are seeing against democratic institutions in the United States.
“Existing democratic institutions are creaky and we’re gonna have to reform them,” Obama stated.
The former president’s remarks on the bombshell Trump indictments came as a result of Amanpour’s question regarding how the rest of the world is responding to “the spectacle of a former president being federally indicted.”
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“How is the rest of the world, the democratic world, maybe even the non-democratic world, meant to interpret that indictment, and indeed the fact that a federal indictee is running, and is able to run for the highest office in the land, maybe even the world,” Amanpour asked the 44th president.
“It’s less than ideal,” Obama answered, “but the fact that we have a former president who is having to answer to charges brought by prosecutors does uphold the basic notion that nobody’s above the law. And the allegations will now be sorted out through a court process.”
“And I think I’m more concerned when it comes to the United States with the fact that not just one particular individual is being accused of undermining existing laws, but that more broadly we’ve seen, whether it’s through the gerrymandering of our districts, whether it’s trying to silence critics through changes in the legislative process attempts to intimidate the press, a strand of anti-democratic sentiment that we’ve seen in the United States.”
The former POTUS pointed the finger at Republicans but noted that no single political party or ideology monopolized the concept of anti-democratic notions.
“It’s something that is right now, most prominent in the Republican Party, but I don’t think it’s something that is unique to one party. I think there is a little less tolerance for ideas that don’t suit us, and it’s sort of the habits of a free and open exchange of ideas and the idea that we all agree to the rules of the game and even if the outcomes aren’t always the ones we’d like, we still abide by those rules,” Obama explained.
“I think that’s weakened since I left office and we’re going to need to strengthen them again.”
See a clip of the interview here:
Featured image via Flickr/Gage Skidmore, under Creative Commons license 2.0
