DONALD Trump has blasted Barack Obama as “grossly incompetent” a day after the former president criticized the current administration’s response to the coronavirus pandemic.
The president made the comment to reporters on Sunday outside the White House after returning from a weekend at Camp David.
“Look, he was an incompetent president, that’s all I can say. Grossly incompetent,” he said.
Trump was responding to remarks made by Obama during a virtual commencement speech to graduates of historically black colleges and universities, in which he said the coronavirus pandemic has “torn back the curtain” on a lack of US leadership.
“More than anything, this pandemic has fully, finally torn back the curtain on the idea that so many folks in charge know what they’re doing,” Obama said during the live-streamed address.
“A lot of them aren’t even pretending to be in charge,” he added.
Trump said he had not seen Obama’s remarks, nor did he elaborate on his comments about the former president.
Earlier in the day, White House adviser Peter Navarro mocked Obama on ABC’s This Week, saying that he’s “glad Mr. Obama has a new job as Joe Biden’s press secretary”.
Navarro said Obama’s remarks included “no mention of manufacturing, no mention of China.”
“As far as I’m concerned, his administration was a kumbaya of incompetence, in which we saw millions of manufacturing jobs go off to China.”
The trade adviser continued: “His new normal was a flat line in terms of wage growth.”
“And I’m happy to report that this president, Donald J. Trump, in three-and-a-half years, built the most beautiful economy in modern history. And the Chinese did take that down in about 30 days.”
Ex-presidents don’t typically speak out against their successors.
In addition to his remarks made on Saturday, Obama also recently lashed out at Trump during a call with supporters and former members of his administration.
“This election that’s coming up on every level is so important because what we’re going to be battling is not just a particular individual or a political party,” Obama said.
“What we’re fighting against is these long-term trends in which being selfish, being tribal, being divided, and seeing others as an enemy — that has become a stronger impulse in American life.”
“It has been an absolute chaotic disaster when that mindset — of ‘what’s in it for me’ and ‘to heck with everybody else’ — when that mindset is operationalized in our government.”
Obama added this was why he will be “spending as much time as necessary and campaigning as hard as I can for Joe Biden.”
Obama has urged his supporters to back Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee, who is trying to unseat Trump in November.
Trump has regularly attacked Obama and this week claimed he was guilty of the “crime of the century.”
He claimed his predecessor had ordered intelligence agencies to spy on him, and demanded Republicans summon Obama to testify in an inquiry into the Russia investigation, which he deemed is the “biggest political scandal in the history of the USA.”
