No Guardrails: Barack Obama Rips GOP Lawmakers Who Refused to Stand up to Trump

When Donald Trump won the presidency, Barack Obama greeted him warmly at the White House. The 44th president gave some words of encouragement of the 45th president and hoped for the best.

Obviously, Trump’s presidency was a disaster that closed with a global pandemic that saw 500,000 Americans die. Obama discussed the past 4 years with Anderson Cooper last night on CNN. Most of all the 44th president was surprised at the lack of Republican oversight as Trump did whatever he wanted.

The host asked the former president, “did you ever think it would get this dark?” Obama responded:

“I thought that there were guard rails, institutionally, that even after Trump was elected that you would have the so-called Republican establishment who would say, “Ok, you know, it’s a problem if the White House doesn’t seem to be concerned about Russian meddling,” or, “It’s a problem if we have a president who’s saying that neo-Nazis marching in Charlottesville, “‘There are good people on both sides.’” That’s a little bit beyond the pale.

And the degree to which we did not see that Republican establishment say, “Hold on, time-out. That’s not acceptable. That’s not who we are,” but rather be cowed into accepting it, and then finally culminating in January 6th where what originally was, “Oh don’t worry, this isn’t going anywhere. We’re just letting Trump and others vent,” and then suddenly you now have large portions of an elected Congress going along with the falsehood that there were problems with the election.”

Watch a video of the segment below, courtesy of CNN:

Former President Obama says he expected more in the GOP to stand up to Trump and his falsehoods about the election: “I didn’t expect that there would be so few people who would say, ‘Well, I don’t mind losing my office because this is too important. America is too important.’” pic.twitter.com/uGKtYnFAKc

— Anderson Cooper 360° (@AC360) June 8, 2021