‘Dude, You Were President’: Obama Flings Trump’s Line Of Attack Right Back At Him

Former President Barack Obama deconstructed some of Donald Trump’s playbook attacks while campaigning for Vice President Kamala Harris in Nevada on Saturday.
Speaking at a rally in Las Vegas, Obama accused the Republican presidential nominee and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance (Ohio), of leaning on scaremongering about immigration as an answer to any issue.
“If you challenge them, they’ll fall back on one answer. It does not matter what it is — housing, health care, education, paying for the bills — one answer: blame the immigrants,” he said.
“He wants you to believe that if you elect him, he will just round up whoever he wants and ship them out and all your problems will be solved,” he added.
He acknowledged that there’s a “real issue” at the border and elements of the system are “broken,” but criticized Trump’s approach.
“When I hear Donald Trump talk … he’s very quick to say to Kamala, ‘Well, you were vice president for four years,’” he added. “Dude, you were president for four years!”
Obama: Trump is very quick to say to Kamala, ‘well, you were vice president for four years.’ Dude, you were president for four years. pic.twitter.com/Y8heQwsbAS
“As I recall, you were up there in the Oval Office,” Obama went on. “So if rounding up and deporting millions of desperate people, many of them who are women and children, if that’s the answer to everything, well, why is it that the number of undocumented immigrants were basically the same when he left office as when he took office?”
“He didn’t solve the problem, and I’ll tell you why. Because he does not have a real plan. He has a concept of a plan, and it’s a mean and ugly plan designed to foster resentment and divide people,” he added.
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Something that would have helped solve the problem, Obama added, was the bipartisan border bill Trump ordered Republican senators to tank earlier this year in order to avoid handing President Joe Biden a win.
“We do not need a president who will make problems worse just to make his politics better,” Obama said.
Trump reportedly plans to send immigrants to mass deportation camps and remove them from the country by the millions if he returns to the White House.
He made illegal immigration a key focus of his 2016 campaign, but it’s questionable how much he actually accomplished in reducing it.