Obama Warns Against ‘Strongman Politics’ In Speech After Trump News Conference

Former US President Barack Obama mounted a passionate defense of democracy and warned against the rise of “strongman politics,” in a speech in South Africa a day after his successor, Donald Trump, was heavily criticized for a humiliating news conference with Vladimir Putin.

In an address Tuesday in honor of the late Nelson Mandela ahead of the 100th anniversary of his birth, Obama criticized populist movements toward authoritarianism around the world and ridiculed the “utter loss of shame among political leaders” who lie.

Obama has made an art of criticizing the current President’s values without explicitly naming Trump, peppering his speech Tuesday with warnings against some of Trump’s key policies, including protectionism, climate change denial and closed borders.

“The politics of fear and resentment and retrenchment began to appear. And that kind of politics is now on the move. It’s on the move at a pace that would have seemed unimaginable just a few years ago,” he told the crowd of around 15,000 people in Johannesburg.

“I am not being alarmist, I’m simply stating the facts. Look around istrongman politics are ascendant, suddenly, whereby elections and some pretense of democracy are maintained, the form of it, where those in powers seek to undermine every institution or norm that gives democracy meaning.”