Tim Balk and Emily Davies
Cleveland, Ohio: Former US president Barack Obama has attacked President Donald Trump’s administration in searing, mocking terms, saying it was defined by “incompetence the likes of which we have not seen in modern times”.
Appearing in Cleveland on Saturday (US time) at his first midterm-election campaign rally, Obama delivered his most forceful attack on Trump in recent memory. He also criticised a campaign ad from Vivek Ramaswamy, the Republican nominee for Ohio governor, saying it exemplified a coarsening of American politics.
Obama, who has been selective about publicly criticising Trump, condemned his Republican successor’s stewardship of the country in terms that were personal and pointed.
He said Trump’s second term had amounted to “two years of chaos and cruelty and corruption”, argued that top administration officials were “not serious people” and said Trump had led the country into an economically painful war in Iran “that nobody asked for.”
“As a former president, I can tell you sometimes factors beyond a president’s control end up foiling the best-laid plans,” Obama said. But, he added, “That is not the case here. In this case, this administration’s actions are directly responsible for rising costs.”
Obama, describing Trump as “you know who” or “this guy in the White House”, said America had never had a president “excel so wildly at just straight-up grifting”. And he cast Trump as disconnected from Americans’ needs, engrossed instead by White House renovation projects.
“He should be on HGTV”, Obama said, ridiculing Trump’s focus on applying gold trimmings to the White House. “He’s got the White House looking like Saddam Hussein opened a cheesecake factory. Just gold everywhere.”
Obama’s appearance at a rally in Detroit later that day set up a rare split-screen with Trump, who was scheduled to appear at a rally in Georgia after voting in Florida that afternoon.
Trump told reporters on Saturday that Obama had been a “lousy president” and cast the former president’s criticisms as a signal of Republicans’ strength.
“We’ve beaten them,” Trump said, referring to his victories in 2016 and 2024. “When I started, we had a very much weaker Republican Party – a smaller, weaker Republican Party. And then I ran, and I won.”
Trump and Obama have long had a complicated and tense relationship. Trump, who succeeded Obama in office in 2017, for years promoted a racist lie that the former president was not born in the United States.
The presidents have recently exchanged public criticisms – though Trump’s have typically been more frequent, forceful and direct. In June, Obama said he thought Trump had an “obsession” with him.
But they also appeared to share a friendly conversation at former president Jimmy Carter’s funeral in 2025. After the ceremony, Trump told reporters that they “probably” like each other and just have “different philosophies”.
In Ohio, Obama was joining Amy Acton, the Democratic nominee for Ohio governor, and former senator Sherrod Brown, the Democratic nominee for Senate in the state.
Acton’s race has consumed national politics in recent days after her Republican opponent Vivek Ramaswamy aired an ad featuring Acton’s mother. Acton says she has not spoken to her mother since she was 12, after her stepfather was charged with raping her. The ad has split Republicans.
Obama assailed Ramaswamy over the ad, saying there appeared to be “no line” Ramaswamy would not cross.
“There’s a decency that we should expect out of our public officials,” Obama said. “And I don’t know what’s happened where the standards of behaviour have gotten so low that somebody can run an ad like that.”
Acton also addressed the commercial, saying that Ramaswamy was targeting her family history to “save his struggling campaign”.
“It’s not going to work,” she said, “because compassion and decency still matter.”
Obama and Trump are presenting starkly different pitches in the final days before the midterms, with their parties locked in bitter battles for control of Congress and statehouses.
Trump, who spoke in Perry, Georgia, on Saturday evening, has been pressing a message that Democrats are dangerous extremists. He has urged voters to pretend he is on the ballot, hoping to activate his party’s base. But polls show his approval rating has plummeted, and Republicans are on the defensive over high prices.
At a rally in Florida on Friday, Trump falsely accused Democrats of being communists and said a vote for Republicans would be a vote for “more money in your pockets, bigger paychecks for your families, lower taxes” and less crime.
Obama has been heavily involved in midterm races, taping dozens of ads for candidates. But until Saturday, his time on the campaign trail was limited to light campaigning in the northern hemisphere spring with James Talarico, the Democratic nominee for Senate in Texas.
The former president made late endorsements over the weekend in Florida, backing David Jolly, the Democratic nominee for Florida governor, and Angie Nixon, the left-wing Democratic Senate nominee, who would be Florida’s first black senator.