Obama swipes at affluent liberals during rare public remarks, says ‘all of us are going to be tested’

Former President Barack Obama took aim at affluent liberals on Tuesday, saying they would be “tested in some way,” unlike during his presidency, warning the crowd they would have to decide what their priorities would be. 

The former Democratic president said during remarks in Hartford, Connecticut that liberals “felt comfortable in their righteousness” during his presidency because it wasn’t challenged. “You could be as progressive and socially conscious as you wanted, and you did not have to pay a price,” he said.

Obama offered no direct rebukes to current events while conversing with historian Heather Cox Richardson, according to The New York Times, only issuing veiled criticisms of President Donald Trump during his remarks. He didn’t mention the president by name once.

“You could still make a lot of money. You could still hang out in Aspen and Milan and travel and have a house in the Hamptons and still think of yourself as a progressive,” Obama said, according to the Times. “We now have a situation in which all of us are going to be tested in some way, and we are going to have to decide what our commitments will be.”

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“Now things are a little different,” he said. “You might lose some of your donors if you’re a university and if you’re a law firm, your billings might drop a little bit, which means you cannot remodel that kitchen in your house in the Hamptons this summer.”

The Times reported that Obama urged businesses, law firms, and universities to counter Trump’s policies. 

The former president posted on X about immigration on Sunday, suggesting immigrants were “being demonized and treated as enemies” in the U.S.

“Thirteen years ago, my administration acted to protect young people who were American in every single way but one: on paper,” the Democrat said in a social media post.

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“DACA was an example of how we can be a nation of immigrants and a nation of laws. And it’s an example worth remembering today, when families with similar backgrounds who just want to live, work, and support their communities, are being demonized and treated as enemies,” the former president said, referring to Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals.

The Atlantic reported on June 8 that some progressives have been frustrated by the former president’s lack of more vocal opposition to Trump. 

“There are many grandmas and Rachel Maddow viewers who have been more vocal in this moment than Barack Obama has,” co-founder of the Progressive Change Institute, Adam Green, told the Atlantic. 

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“It is heartbreaking,” Green said, “to see him sacrificing that megaphone when nobody else quite has it.”