Obama Tells Pennsylvania Rally “The Next Thirteen Days Will Matter For Decades To Come”
At a drive-in rally in Pennsylvania, former President Obama, urged Americans to vote and warned the result of the election will matter for decades to come, The Hill reports.
From outside the Lincoln Financial Field, Obama delivered a strong message to the crowd that was appropriately socially distanced.
“We cannot afford four more years of this, Philadelphia,” Obama said to a mix of car horns and applause.
Obama then delivered a critical assessment of the White House’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“The idea that this White House has done anything but screw this up is just untrue.”
“We literally left this White House a pandemic playbook,” Obama said. “They probably used it to, I don’t know, prop up a wobbly table somewhere.”
Former president Obama also pointed out Trump couldn’t be trusted to lead the country through the pandemic when he couldn’t do the “basic steps” to care for himself in reference to the President contracting COVID.
Obama also tore into Trump’s economic record saying he was the first president to lose jobs since Herbert Hoover and also raised the alarm over Republican’s efforts to dismantle the Affordable Health Care Act during a pandemic.
“It’s shameful,” he said. “The idea that you would take health care away from people at the moment they need it the most — what is the logic of that? There is no logic.”
“They keep on promising we’re going to have a great replacement. They said it’s coming. It’s been coming in two weeks for the last 10 years. Where is it? Where is this great plan to replace ObamaCare? They’ve had 10 years to do it. There is no plan. They’ve never had one,” Obama said.
Turning to the state of the US democracy, Obama urged Americans to vote saying the election was a battle.
“Our democracy is not gonna work if the people who are supposed to be our leaders lie every day and just make things up,” Obama said. “This notion of truthfulness and democracy and citizenship and being responsible — these aren’t Republican or Democratic principles. They’re American principles. We need to reclaim them.”
In Obama’s first in-person rally in support of his former Vice President, he pointed out Trump, who had a rally in Pennsylvania the day before, cut and run.
“The president spent some time in Erie last night and apparently he complained about having to travel here,” Obama said. “Then he cut the event short. Poor guy. I don’t feel that way. I love coming to Pennsylvania.”
Trump won Pennsylvania in the 2016 election, however, a recent USA Today-Suffolk University poll shows that Biden is ahead of the president by seven points.
Watch Obama’s speech in full below.
