Former President Barack Obama released his memoir detailing his life in and out of the presidency. In the midst of promoting his book, Obama criticized his successor Donald Trump for his behavior towards a transfer of power.
Obama spoke with the Atlantic about his newly-released memoir titled “A Promised Land.” The former president compared the transition period he experienced from George W. Bush and his administration following his 2008 election to the current situation between Trump and Joe Biden. Obama criticized Trump for his unwillingness to allow the transition from his administration to Biden’s to go smoothly, but also his fellow Republicans for not speaking up enough against him. Trump has refused concession and has continued to this day to assert claims about election fraud without providing any evidence.
“For all the differences between myself and George W. Bush,” said Obama. “He and his administration could not have been more gracious and intentional about ensuring a smooth handoff. One of the really distressing things about the current situation is the amount of time that is being lost because of Donald Trump’s petulance and the unwillingness of other Republicans to call him on it.”
Obama also weighed in on the possibility of Biden working with a Republican-controlled Senate after the Georgia Senate runoffs in January. The former president shared his former colleague’s relationship with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, saying that the two lawmakers have known each other for a long time. Obama also had some words about Republicans, saying that the problem was not that he did not try harder to appeal to the opposition, but that Republicans found it “politically advantageous to demonize me and the Democratic party.”
In his memoir, the former president also revealed Biden’s advice to him during the Al-Qaida raid that killed terrorist leader Osama Bin Laden back in 2011. Biden, who was his vice president at the time, advised him to wait first before ordering the hit on Bin Laden. The now-incoming president’s advice to him was also echoed by other senior White House officials at the time noting that Biden urged for caution. Biden, Obama writes, had concerns about what would happen in case of failure and that he should wait until the intelligence community was certain that Bin Laden was in the compound in Pakistan.