Former President Barack Obama opened up about some of the political clout and social perks he has lost after leaving office in 2016 during a speech at the COP26 global climate change summit in Scotland on Monday.
“Um, I am a private citizen now, so trips like this feel a little bit different than they used to,” Obama mused. “I don’t get invited to the big group photo, traffic is a thing again, music doesn’t play when I walk into the room.”
The former president went on to complain about successor Donald Trump, stating “Of course some of our progress stalled when my successor decided to unilaterally pull out of the Paris agreement in his first year in office. I wasn’t real happy about that.”
At #COP26 in Glasgow, Obama takes shots at Trump: “Of course some of our progress stalled when my successor decided to unilaterally pull out of the Paris agreement in his first year in office. I wasn’t real happy about that." pic.twitter.com/eIpUjlUlvk
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) November 8, 2021
Obama weighed in frequently during the 2020 presidential election, going as far to belittle Democrat primary candidate and current Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg for being “gay” and “short”:
According to a new book chronicling Joe Biden’s path to becoming the current President of the United States, former President Barack Obama stated that former South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg could not win the 2020 presidential election because “he’s gay” and “he’s short.”
An excerpt from the book “Lucky: How Joe Biden Barely Won The Presidency” by The Hill’s Amie Parnes and NBC’s Jonathan Allen describes a scene in which Obama did not offer support for Biden and ridiculed Buttigieg in front of an audience of elite black donors in 2019, choosing instead to highlight his support as a former president for Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA).