A "totally chaotic disaster". Barack Obama did not mince words to comment on how President Donald Trump handled the Covid-19 pandemic. He was speaking during a conversation with former members of his administration, according to a recording obtained by Yahoo News.

This scathing criticism, the most explicit to date from him, the former Democratic president made it Friday, May 8, during a half-hour telephone conversation with former collaborators of his government.

Barack Obama invokes in particular the response to the health crisis to justify the need to choose good leaders and call on his ex-advisers to invest in the campaign of Joe Biden, his former vice-president and Democratic candidate for President in November facing Donald Trump.

"The coming election is very important"

"The coming election, at all levels, is so important because we will not only face an individual or a political party," he said, according to what he reported in several media. He believes that the real adversary are "long-term trends" like "being tribal, being divided, seeing others as enemies", which are likely to characterize "American life".

Still very popular with Democrats, Barack Obama had already hinted that the Republican billionaire had "dismissed the warnings" about the risks of a pandemic.

Donald Trump is accused by his critics of having first minimized the threat, then of having given contradictory and confused instructions, between the calls for caution and the haste to see the economy restart.

Obama fears that "the rule of law is threatened"

In Friday's conversation, the first black President of the United States (2009-2017) also reversed the controversial decision of the United States Department of Justice to drop the charges against Michael Flynn, a former Donald Trump advisor prosecuted for lying about his contacts with a Russian diplomat.

"There is no precedent where we see a person charged with perjury who gets away with it," he said. "This is the kind of situation where one can begin to fear that (...) the rule of law will be threatened," he warned.

"When we take this path, it can go very quickly, as we have seen elsewhere," he added, calling on not to underestimate this event. There too, he underlines to see there a reason to support his former vice-president.

"A declaration of war on Trump"

"This is why I will spend as much time as necessary campaigning as intensively as possible for Joe Biden," he said.

With these words, "Barack Obama declares war on Donald Trump", writes on Twitter Corentin Sellin, co-author "From the United States and the world (1823-1945)". He accuses his successor "of tilting the country towards 1 dictatorship", he adds.

Barack #Obama therefore declares war on D. # Trump by letting leak this evaluation of his management of #COVID ー 19: 1 "absolutely chaotic disaster". As important politically as unusual for 1 ex-president towards his successor. https://t.co/oidF22DOAc

- Corentin Sellin (@CorentinSellin) May 9, 2020

With AFP

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