Obama has never mocked Trump so personally. That comes with a big risk

October 26, 2026 — 11:30am

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On the election night of November 6, 2012, President Barack Obama clinched his second term by winning Ohio over Republican Mitt Romney. Fourteen years later, Obama returned to Ohio on the weekend to help the Democratic candidates for governor and senator win their races. He was greyer, sleeves rolled up like a man prepared to get his hands dirty, and with the familiar opener: “Hello Ohio!” Music from U2 and Springsteen energised the air. It felt like the old days. It was how he campaigned.

But throughout this second term of Donald Trump’s presidency, many Democrats were unsettled if not angry at Obama, and at former president Bill Clinton, for being absent and not taking the field to tackle Trump when he was abusing his presidency by violating his oath of office and exercising unprecedented executive power.

The two former presidents did not serve as opposition leaders when Trump dismantled the education department and foreign aid programs, firing hundreds of thousands of government employees in the process. They were barely visible when Trump’s legislation, passed by the Republican-dominated Congress, provided trillion-dollar tax cuts for the wealthiest, cut health insurance premiums and Medicaid and food stamps for tens of millions of Americans, gutted clean energy programs, added $5 trillion to the national debt ... The list is long.

When Trump initiated, together with Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu, his war of choice........

© The Age