Obama warns Trump's tweets are distracting from 'the truly destructive actions' of his appointees

Barack Obama.
(Image credit: Alex Edelman/AFP via Getty Images)

In a blistering rebuke of President Trump and his relationship with the truth, former President Barack Obama on Wednesday said if Joe Biden is in the White House, Americans will be able to "go about your lives knowing that the president is not going to retweet conspiracy theories about secret cabals running the world or that Navy SEALs didn't actually kill [Osama] bin Laden."

Trump recently retweeted a baseless QAnon conspiracy theory claiming the terrorist is still alive, and during a rally in Philadelphia, Obama said the president is doing outrageous things in order to "distract all of us from the truly destructive actions that his appointees are doing all across the government, actions that affect your lives." He used the Environmental Protection Agency as an example, saying it is "supposed to protect our air and water, and right now is run by an energy lobbyist that gives polluters free rein to dump unlimited poison into our air and water."

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Catherine Garcia, The Week US

Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.