President Obama takes thinly veiled swipes at Donald Trump in Rutgers commencement speech

On Sunday, President Obama became the first sitting U.S. president to give the commencement speech at New Jersey's Rutgers University, celebrating its 250th anniversary this year. In a 45-minute speech before 10,000 graduates and 40,000 guests, Obama joked about local sandwiches, a local bar, and how this generation is terrible at spelling and penmanship (though "smarter and better educated than my generation," he added), while also taking several clear swipes at presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump, without mentioning him by name.

"The world is more interconnected than ever before, and it's becoming more connected every day," Obama said at one point. "Building walls won't change that." At another, he took implicit aim at Trump's "Make America Great Again" slogan and rhetoric. "The good old days weren't all that good," he said. "In fact, by almost every measure, America is better and the world is better than it was 50 years ago or 30 years ago or even eight years ago ... When you hear someone longing for the good old days, take it with a grain of salt."

Obama also advised the students that when they choose policymakers, they should remember the skills and values they learned at college. "Facts, evidence, reason, logic, an understanding of science — these are good things," he said. "In politics, as in life, ignorance is not a virtue. It's not cool to not know what you're talking about. That's not keeping it real or telling it like it is. That's not challenging political correctness. That's just not knowing what you are talking about." And he said that you shouldn't want an amateur politician as president any more than you'd want an untrained pilot or surgeon. "In our public lives, we suddenly say, 'I don't want somebody who's done it before'?" he asked.

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The president said that he chose Rutgers as one of the three colleges he will address this year — he also spoke to Howard University, and he's scheduled to speak at the U.S. Air Force Academy — "because you asked ... You are the first to launch a three-year campaign — emails, letters, tweets, YouTube videos. I even got three notes from the grandmother of the student body president, and I have to say, that really sealed the deal because I have a soft spot for grandmas." You can watch excerpts of the speech below. Peter Weber