Barack Obama headlined his first campaign rally of 2018 in Anaheim, Calif. Saturday, following a stinging speech on Friday in which he criticized current U.S. president Donald Trump.
The former president spoke at the Anaheim Convention Center in the heart of Orange County, once a Republican stronghold, but which voted Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election.
Obama said that the U.S. is at a “challenging moment” and enormous changes are taking place. He said “people feel unsettled, people feel scared,” and they’re worried about their children’s future.
However, he also expressed hope, saying that there are no problems that can’t be solved through co-operation and following the traditions “that are the best in America.”
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He also warned of the temptation for politicians to divide people and find “scapegoats” for their own power and gain.
When that happens, he says, people become cynical and decide not to participate in the political process — creating a vacuum filled by lobbyists and special interests.
“This is a government for everybody, it’s not for sale, that’s what we believe in,” Obama said.
Obama shared the billing with seven Democratic candidates in competitive U.S. House districts across California. Those races are considered crucial to the party’s efforts to retake control of the House from Republican. Four of those districts are at least partly in Orange County.
Obama issued a scorching critique of President Donald Trump on Friday in a speech at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, in which he said Trump was a “symptom, not the cause” of divisions in American society.
— With files from Associated Press
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