Former President Barack Obama has issued a warning about the future of American democracy, cautioning that the country is “dangerously close” to normalizing behavior “consistent with autocracies.”
Speaking Tuesday night in Hartford, Connecticut, he offered thinly veiled criticism of President Donald Trump and questioned the administration’s commitment to democracy.
“If you follow regularly what is said by those who are in charge of the federal government right now, there is a weak commitment to what we understood — and not just my generation, at least since World War II — our understanding of how a liberal democracy is supposed to work,” Obama said.
But if you want to deliver on change, then it’s a game of addition, not subtraction.
former president barack obama
“What we’re seeing right now … is not consistent with American democracy,” he added. “It is consistent with autocracies. It is consistent with Hungary under Orbán. It’s consistent with places that hold elections but do not otherwise observe what we think of [as] a fair system in which everybody’s voice matters and people have a seat at the table, and there are checks and balances, and nobody’s above the law. We’re not there yet completely, but I think that we are dangerously close to normalizing behavior like that.”
Speaking just days after millions of Americans demonstrated against Trump in the nationwide “No Kings” protests, Obama praised the pushback from individuals outside of government, but stressed that elected officials need to do more to protect American institutions.
“There also has to be people in government in both parties who say, ‘Well, no, you can’t do that,’” the former president said.








