Obama Warns of ‘Further Delegitimizing of Our Democracy’: Trump Violated ‘Core Tenet’ of Presidency With 2020 Election ‘Hooey’

Former President Barack Obama slammed into Donald Trump by saying that his successor’s lies about the 2020 election will have a corrosive impact on future elections in America.

Speaking at a virtual fundraiser for the National Democratic Redistricting Committee on Monday, Obama (in remarks made public via The Guardian) ripped Trump’s “big lie” that the election was corrupted by mass voter fraud, and said Trump broke a “core tenet” of the presidency by refusing to respect the election and facilitate a peaceful transition of power to Joe Biden.

“What we saw was my successor, the former president, violate that core tenet that you count the votes and then declare a winner, and fabricate and make up a whole bunch of hooey,” Obama said.

Obama further warned that Trump’s undermining of the election’s integrity would pave the way for future attempts to reduce voting accessibility and put more restrictions in place. The former president also outlined concerns about what will happen to the integrity of American democracy if more elections are contested like this.

“If we don’t stop these kinds of efforts now, what we are going to see is more and more contested elections…We are going to see a further delegitimizing of our democracy,” Obama said. He ominously added that this would be “a breakdown of the basic agreement that has held this magnificent democratic experiment together all these years.”

Obama’s remarks come shortly as Trump’s former attorney general, William Barr, drew Trump’s wrath for speaking against his lies. Barr said Trump’s claims against the election were “bullsh*t,” and reports suggest that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell urged Barr to shoot down conspiracy theories in the aftermath of the election.