Former US President Barack Obama has remarked that a significant portion of the world’s issues, around 80 per cent, stem from elderly men clinging to power and legacy, in comments widely interpreted as a veiled dig at 77-year-old Donald Trump.
Speaking in London on Friday with British historian David Olusoga, Obama, 64, said, “It’s fair to say that 80 per cent of the world’s problems involve old men hanging on who are afraid of death and insignificance, and they won’t let go. They build pyramids, and they put their names on everything. They get very anxious about it.”
The timing of his remarks is notable, coming just weeks after Trump defended the deployment of National Guard troops in Washington, DC, justifying it as a response to what he described as rising violent crime. “They say: ‘We don’t need him. Freedom, freedom, he’s a dictator.’ I don’t like a dictator. I’m not a dictator. I’m a man with great common sense and a smart person,” Trump had said at the time.
Trump, who returned to office on 20 January after defeating Democrat Kamala Harris, made those comments amid mounting criticism that his actions mirrored authoritarian tendencies.
Obama has previously voiced concerns about ageing political figures refusing to step aside. Back in 2019, he said, “If you look at the world and look at the problems, it’s usually old people, usually old men, not getting out of the way. It is important for political leaders to try and remind themselves that they are there to do a job. But you are not there for life, you are not there in order to prop up your own sense of self-importance or your own power.”
Obama Criticises Trump Over Paracetamol-Autism Link
During the London discussion, Obama also took a swipe at Trump, referring to him as his “successor” for spreading claims linking the common painkiller Tylenol (paracetamol) to autism in babies.
“We have the spectacle of my successor in the Oval Office making broad claims around certain drugs and autism that have been continuously disproven,” he said.
He said, “The degree to which those comments can undermine public health, do harm to women who are pregnant, create anxiety for parents who do have children who are autistic, is violence against the truth.”
Trump had recently suggested that paracetamol was unsafe for use during pregnancy, advising women to consult their doctors about reducing its use, a statement that sparked widespread criticism. UK Health Secretary Wes Streeting publicly urged women to ignore Trump’s remarks.
Obama went on to frame the broader political landscape as a clash between two competing visions for the future of America and the world. “There’s a tug of war. One side believes in progressive change through democracy. The other, driven by populists, including my successor, wants to return to a particular view of America where ‘we, the people’ applies to only some, not all,” he said, adding, “And where there are some pretty clear hierarchies in terms of status and who ranks where.”
He also didn’t spare the left, criticising progressives who, in his view, became complacent in previous decades. “They are posturing that we believe in all these values because they were never tested. Now they’re being tested,” Obama noted.
