OBAMA/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “The night before the 2016 election, Barack Obama said Donald Trump was ‘uniquely unqualified’ on the economy, ‘temperamentally unfit’ on foreign policy, couldn’t be trusted with the nuclear codes and had ‘utter contempt for the values that make this nation great.’ Friday [9-7-18], the former president took the stage here in a University of Illinois auditorium and said it had been all that and worse. For all the unprecedented moments Trump’s presidency has brought, Obama’s speech, which kicked off his midterm campaigning, marked a new one: a former president going on the attack directly against his successor—and arguing directly that the man in the Oval Office isn’t just a political opponent, but a threat to the core of America itself…Laying out a brief history of America — starting with George Washington’s decision to step out of public life after leaving the presidency — Obama framed the 2018 elections as more significant than ever before. And for the first time since leaving office, he said Trump’s name. Obama unfurled a paragraph-by-paragraph condemnation of Trump, his presidency and what he has uncorked in American politics.”
–Edward-Isaac Dovere, “Obama delivers full-throated rebuke of Trump’s presidency,” Politico, September 7, 2018 3:08 pm