Barack Obama torches Trump over controversial move: ‘Inherently corrupting’

Former President Barack Obama blasted President Donald Trump for his deployment of National Guard troops to deter crime in U.S. cities.

Obama said on Marc Maron’s “WTF Podcast” that the U.S.’s “institutional guardrails” have been “weakened” under the Trump administration. He also criticized Trump for deploying the National Guard to Democratic-led cities despite pushback from state leaders.

“I think there is no doubt that a lot of the norms, civic habits, expectations, institutional guardrails that we had, that we took for granted, for our democracy have been weakened deliberately,” Obama said on Monday’s episode. “I don’t think they’re destroyed, but I think they have been damaged and it’s and they’ve been systematic about it.”

“It wasn’t controversial for me to go to other countries and say, ‘You know what? It’s a good idea for militaries to be under civilian control.’ Because when you have militaries that can direct force against their own people, that is that is inherently corrupting,” he added.

He then suggested that the Trump administration is attempting a “deliberate end run around” of the Posse Comitatus Act, which bars the U.S. military from enforcing domestic laws except when authorized by law.

“When you see an administration suggest that ordinary street crime is an insurrection or a terrorist act, that is a genuine effort to weaken how we have understood democracy that was understood by Democrats and Republicans,” Obama said.

He also questioned how Americans and Fox News would react if he sent the National Guard to Texas to deter crime when he was president.

“If I had sent in the National Guard into Texas and just said, ‘You know what, a lot of problems in Dallas, a lot of crime there. And I don’t care what Governor Abbott says, I’m going to kind of take over law enforcement because I think things are out of control,’” Obama said. “It is mind boggling to me how Fox News would have responded.”

Trump has deployed the National Guard to the cities of Los Angeles, Washington D.C., Portland and Chicago as part of his effort to crack down on crime across the country. However, state and local leaders have pushed back on Trump’s efforts, as numerous states have filed lawsuits against the deployments.

Obama also urged the Justice Department and the court systems to not drag politics into law enforcement.

“We don’t want masked folks with rifles and machine guns patrolling our streets. We want cops on the beat who know the neighborhood and the kids around and that’s how we keep the peace around here,” Obama said.

“We don’t want kangaroo courts and trumped up charges. That’s what happens in other places that we used to scold for doing that. We want our court system and our Justice Department and our prosecutors to be and our FBI to be just playing things straight and looking at the facts and not meddling in politics the way we’ve seen lately,” he added.