Obama: Democrats must ‘toughen up’ against Trump

JAMIE KELTER DAVIS/THE NEW YORK TIMES

Former President Barack Obama moderates a conversation at the Obama Foundation 2024 Democracy Forum in Chicago, Dec. 5, 2024. In private remarks to party donors on Friday, Obama scolded Democrats for failing to speak out against President Donald Trump and his policies, suggesting they were shrinking from the challenge out of fear of retribution.

WASHINGTON >> Former President Barack Obama has a stern critique for members of his party: Too many have been cowed into silence.

In private remarks to party donors Friday night, Obama scolded Democrats for failing to speak out against President Donald Trump and his policies, suggesting they were shrinking from the challenge out of fear of retribution.

“It’s going to require a little bit less navel-gazing and a little less whining and being in fetal positions. And it’s going to require Democrats to just toughen up,” Obama said at a fundraiser for the Democratic National Committee at the home of New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy.

“What I have been surprised by is the degree to which I’ve seen people who, when I was president, or progressives, liberals, stood for all kinds of stuff, who seem like they’re kind of cowed and intimidated and shrinking away from just asserting what they believe, or at least what they said they believe,” he added.

Locked out of power in Washington, Democrats have been largely arguing among themselves about how to confront a hostile Trump administration. Obama’s remarks were circulated by his office today.

He expressed particular disdain for law firms that he said had been willing to “set aside the law” in response to Trump’s actions “not because, by the way, that they’re going to be thrown in jail, but because they might lose a few clients and might not be able to finish that kitchen rehab at their Hampton house. I’m not impressed.”

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Obama did not mention Columbia University, his alma mater, which is on the verge of paying hundreds of millions of dollars to settle with the Trump administration over accusations it permitted antisemitism on campus, or identify any of the prominent Democratic law firms that have made deals with Trump’s White House.

But the former president’s comments were interpreted by people in the room as a critique of the party’s elites for having gone quiet when they were sorely needed to step up, according to a person who attended.

The excerpts provided by Obama’s office contained no evidence of physician-heal-thyself reflectiveness. Obama, after all, has scarcely been at the tip of the Democratic spear in resisting Trump. He has issued few public statements opposing Trump administration actions and has yet to appear this year at a rally, town hall or other public event staged by opponents of Trump.

Obama has spent much of his post-presidential life producing movies, documentaries and podcasts while building a beachfront compound in Hawaii and playing golf on Martha’s Vineyard.

Last month, Obama appeared in a conversation in Connecticut with celebrity historian Heather Cox Richardson during which he said the country was “dangerously close” to sliding into autocracy.

On Friday, not only did Obama scold Democrats who have failed to speak out against Trump and his administration, he also appeared to mock the level of sacrifice or risk-taking that doing so required. He invoked the 9-foot-by-9-foot prison cell in which Nelson Mandela spent 27 years, saying, “Nobody’s asking for that kind of courage.”

Obama warned that the country was in danger of backsliding on the steady social progress it has made since World War II — a period “in which everything kept getting better, more or less,” he said.

“For most of our lives, it was easy to stand for equality and justice, et cetera,” Obama said. “You didn’t really have to make a lot of sacrifices. That hasn’t been true for most of human history or American history. It’s still not true in most of the world. So these are moments where your values are tested and you have to stand up for them.”

“Don’t tell me you’re a Democrat, but you’re kind of disappointed right now, so you’re not doing anything,” Obama added. “Don’t say that you care deeply about free speech and then you’re quiet. No, you stand up for free speech when it’s hard. When somebody says something that you don’t like, but you still say, you know what, that person has the right to speak. It is, you know, what’s needed now is courage.”

During the fundraiser, Obama praised the Democratic nominees for governor of New Jersey, Rep. Mikie Sherrill, and Virginia, former Rep. Abigail Spanberger. He also urged donors to contribute to the Democratic National Committee, which his own aides worked to diminish during his presidency.

Obama also waded into a dispute between the party’s left and some moderates, telling the donors that, whatever their ideology, it was incumbent on Democrats to produce tangible results for voters if they hoped to win elections and regain power.

“You want to deliver for people and make their lives better? You got to figure out how to do it,” he said. “I don’t care how much you love working people. They can’t afford a house because all the rules in your state make it prohibitive to build.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

© 2025 The New York Times Company

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