Obama Repeatedly Takes Shots at Trump in Historic Library Speech

At the opening of his presidential center in Chicago Thursday, former President Barack Obama did not shy away from criticizing Donald Trump.

While he did not mention him by name, Obama criticized Trump throughout the speech. He noted that the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence was coming up, and that it emphasized that “we are all created equal, endowed by our creator with certain unalienable rights. And that in the newly independent United States, there will be no kings or lords, no serfs or subjects, but only citizens,” perhaps alluding to the “No Kings” protests or Trump’s constant referral to himself as king.*

Obama pointed out that the exhibits in the presidential museum “focus not just on policies, but on the shared values that make democracy possible. A belief in the intrinsic dignity and worth of all people and that no one is above the law or beneath its protection.”

The former president then listed several principles outlined in the Constitution that Trump has flouted throughout his time in the Oval Office.

“A belief in checks and balances in our government and an accountability that comes with it. An independent judiciary and a robust free press. A belief that our military and law enforcement owe allegiance not to any president or political party, but to the people and our Constitution,” Obama said. “A belief in the peaceful transfer of power after the people have spoken in fair and free elections, recognizing that in a large, complicated society like ours, no group or faction gets its way 100 percent of the time.”

Obama pointedly highlighted Republicans hated by Trump who also believed in these values.

“These are the values and traditions I believe in. And they are not Republican or Democratic values. They are American values we can all share regardless of party. Values every president here today, as different as we are, has tried our best to uphold. Values that John McCain and Mitt Romney believed in no less than I did,” Obama said.

Obama praised one of the biggest acts of defiance against Trump so far in the latter’s second presidential term: The local resistance opposing ICE and Operation Metro Surge in Minnesota’s Twin Cities. He said that “those ordinary people in the Twin Cities who braved frigid temperatures, risked their own safety, standing shoulder to shoulder to look out for their neighbors and sometimes look out for strangers because they knew that was the right thing to do” were among the best of America.

Trump wasn’t invited to the opening of the presidential center, although Obama Foundation CEO Valerie Jarrett said he is welcome to visit in the future. Thursday’s event was a reminder that at one time, presidents used to speak about America’s unifying values.

Watch Obama’s full remarks here:

* This article originally mistranscribed Obama’s speech.

President Donald Trump won’t stop ranting about the stock market amid backlash to his disastrous peace deal with Iran.

“These fools, who think I haven’t been tough enough on Iran, when the Stock Market Just Hit A RECORD HIGH, and Oil prices are ‘tumbling’ down, are either jealous, bad people, or stupid,” Trump wrote on Truth Social early Thursday morning.

But that was only the beginning: Trump proceeded to post multiple times railing against his critics, pointing to the stock market and oil prices as proof of his masterful deal making.

“Markets are loving what is happening with Oil Prices way down, and Stocks way up,” Trump wrote in one post. “All there is for the U.S. is Success, Lower Oil Prices, and Victory. Check out the Stock Market,” he wrote in another. “THE STOCK MARKETS ARE ROARING,” he wrote in yet another missive.

After Trump signed the peace deal with Iran, Wall Street jumped one percent Wednesday, and stocks have continued to rise despite Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh’s decision to hold interest rates steady. Oil prices dropped to their lowest prices since the war began. Trump gloats about these changes as if he expects us to forget how they got that way in the first place.

But Trump’s peace deal won’t solve the country’s oil issues overnight, especially after the months-long closure of the Strait of Hormuz threatened to take the U.S. oil supply into the danger zone.

Even if some things are bouncing back, that still wouldn’t take away from the fact that Iran is in a stronger position now than it was before the war, and the United States is slowly crawling back to where it started.

President Trump’s reflecting pool woes are growing. 

Days after the water in the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool turned green from algae, the recently applied blue paint is now peeling off the bottom of the pool. 

Meanwhile, the current algae bloom in the pool is the biggest amount recorded in the month of June in at least five years, according to The Washington Post. 

The president personally requested “American flag blue” paint in his $14 million renovation of the pool, which didn’t go through a required bidding process and was instead awarded to a company with no federal contracting experience who is overcharging the government.  

Any outdoor pool of untreated water is prone to growing algae, and crews were seen Tuesday dumping hydrogen peroxide into the water in a hasty attempt to kill the aquatic plant. There’s one problem with that: Hydrogen peroxide also serves as a paint remover. So in trying to (ineffectively) kill the algae, Trump also ruined his new paint job and created a potential hazard to local birds such as ducks. 

A close-up photograph of the pool workers’ equipment revealed that they were using a 12 percent hydrogen peroxide concentrate, which can cause problems if inhaled and burns if the chemical touches the skin, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The Trump administration blames residual material in supply lines for the growing algae problem. The Interior Department, which is in charge of the pool, said it was using hydrogen peroxide and “high-tech nanobubble ozone technology” to treat the outbreak.

But not only has the hydrogen peroxide failed to get rid of the algae, it has caused the blue paint to peel and raised phosphate levels in the pool “far higher than what is recommended to keep algae at bay,” according to CNN, which tested the pool’s water with the help of a swimming pool store. The whole project is now attracting attention for all of the wrong reasons, and it may look even worse than before by the time the America250 celebration takes place on July 4. 

Vice President JD Vance told three massive lies while defending the recently signed memorandum of understanding with Iran, which includes what many see as multiple U.S. capitulations on key points of contention.

Vance took the podium in Washington, D.C., Thursday afternoon to make his case.

“The nuclear weapons program is destroyed. It is gone. If the Iranians decided tomorrow to build a nuclear weapon, they simply don’t have the capacity in order to do that,” Vance said. “What we’re trying to ensure is they don’t rebuild that capacity—not just a year from now, two years from now, but many many years from now.”

This is lie number one. Although President Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth have claimed to have completely destroyed Iran’s nuclear program multiple times, U.S. intelligence reveals that there was limited damage during the course of the war. In fact, the time Iran would need to build a nuclear weapon has not changed since last summer. (Iran has long maintained that it is not seeking a nuclear weapon through its program.)

Vance also claimed that Iran has committed to destroying their enriched uranium stockpile and to cease enrichment—two more lies that aren’t even mentioned in the recently signed memorandum of understanding. In fact, Iran has never promised not to enrich throughout their entire nuclear history.

“Under this deal [Iran is] being allowed now to sell their oil freely. How is that not a financial benefit?” a reporter asked Vance. “And they’re being allowed to do that without making any new concrete nuclear commitments. So can you explain, how is that not lopsided?”

“They’ve made very concrete nuclear commitments—they’ve committed to the destruction of the highly enriched stockpile that they have in their possession,” Vance replied.

But that’s not what’s in the MOU. The final text says that Iran will use “minimum methodology” to gradually down-blend their stockpile. That is not the same as “the destruction of the highly enriched stockpile,” as Vance said. All other references to the uranium in the MOU remain vague, as both sides have agreed to revisit the issue at the end of a 60-day negotiating period.

The administration trotted out Vance to lie about how great his paltry deal he made with Iran was, and even he struggled to push the narrative effectively. The next 60 days will be a huge indicator of Vance’s actual negotiating abilities. As of right now, it’s not looking good.

Senator Bernie Sanders thinks the American people should have a stake in AI companies.

The democratic socialist from Vermont introduced a bill on Thursday where leading AI firms making at least $200 million in annual revenue would pay a one-time tax of 50 percent of stock to create a sovereign wealth fund for taxpayers, which would be worth about $7 trillion. That fund would have a 5 percent annual dividend for direct payments to Americans, which Sanders estimates would be more than $1,000.

“AI was not created out of thin air,” Sanders said in a statement. “It was not a brilliant idea that just popped into Mark Zuckerberg’s head or Elon Musk’s imagination. The foundation of AI is based on the collective knowledge of humanity and the creative work of tens of millions of people.

“The principle is simple: When a public resource generates wealth, the public should share in that wealth,” Sanders added. Under the terms of the bill, companies would have to split their AI and non-AI businesses.

Sanders is proposing that the fund would be managed by a newly created, bipartisan Independent Commission for Democratic AI, made up of seven members nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate. The commission could also have the power to use its voting shares in the companies to block AI decisions that are bad for the country.

“Left unchecked, Artificial Intelligence and robotics threatens the jobs, privacy rights and mental health of every man, woman and child in America,” Sanders’s statement said. “As a society, we can no longer sit back and allow a handful of Big Tech oligarchs to determine the future of this revolutionary technology with no democratic input.”

The bill is not without its pitfalls. The American taxpayer would be tied to the AI companies’ success, which comes at the cost of building unpopular data centers, displacing American jobs, and consuming vast amounts of electricity, including burning a lot of fossil fuels. In effect, the American public would own a profitable, but toxic, asset.

While the bill faces a tall order to pass, it’s a good start on the question of how to reign in and regulate AI. The ideal scenario, however, would have to go a lot further.