Former President Barack Obama compared President Donald Trump to a despot who thinks he can “do anything to stay in power” during a “60 Minutes” interview broadcast Sunday.
“I think that there has been this sense over the last several years that literally anything goes and is justified in order to get power. And that’s not unique to the United States,” Obama told the CBS News program.
“There are strong men and dictators around the world who think that ‘I can do anything to stay in power. I can kill people. I can throw them in jail. I can run phony elections. I can suppress journalists.’”(RELATED: Tucker Carlson Reviews Latest Obama Memoir: ‘Barack Obama Is A Genius; You Are A Racist’)
The Obama administration allegedly obtained reporter and editor phone conversations in 2013, according to the Associated Press. Obama also reportedly targeted Fox News correspondent James Rosen with surveillance.
Obama was also critical Sunday of Trump for challenging the results of the 2020 presidential election, with accusations of voter fraud and initiating legal action, saying “the president doesn’t like to lose and never admits loss.”
Obama suggested it was more troubling that Trump’s reluctance to concede is being enabled by “Republican officials who clearly know better are going along with this, are humoring him in this fashion.”
The former president suggested that was “one more step in delegitimizing not just the incoming Biden administration, but democracy generally. And that’s a dangerous path.”
Obama compared not accepting the electoral results to a child refusing to admit losing. “I mean, if my daughters, in any kind of competition, pouted and then accused the other side of cheating when they lost, when there was no evidence of it, we’d scold them.”
President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump look on as Vice President Mike Pence (not pictured) speaks on election night in the East Room of the White House in the early morning hours of Nov 04, 2020 in Washington, DC. Trump spoke shortly after 2 a.m.with the presidential race against Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden then still too close to call. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
“But that’s not who we’re supposed to be. And one of the signals I think that Joe Biden needs to send to the world is that, ‘No, those values that we preached, and we believed in, and subscribed in, we still believe,’” Obama insisted. (RELATED: Obama Relentlessly Attacked Fox News)
Obama was on the show to discuss his latest memoir, “A Promised Land,” that characterizes the Trump political phenomenon as a racial backlash: “For millions of Americans spooked by a black man in the White House, he promised an elixir for their racial anxiety,” he wrote.