Chloe Meinershagen - Obama Blasts Trump and Urges Students to Vote

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/obama-receive-ethics-government-award-university-illinois/story?id=57657053

Typically the outgoing US Presidents leave their time in public office to give room for the new leader to make a mark. It's a longtime tradition, but Barack Obama chose to speak out against Donald Trump this past Friday in a speech to University of Illinois students. Stephanie Ebbs wrote about Obama's speech in her article through ABC News. He started out the speech about why he loves our country and the history of greatness that America has had in its past. Obama then started to get more specific about what's happening now and why it's important for us as young people to vote. He said that whether you're a Democrat or Republican, there are things that we should all agree on, such as the fact that Nazis are bad, that there should be decency and honor to the office of President, that we shouldn't be worried about our leadership cozying up to the former leader of the KGB, or whether the President is obstructing federal investigations. He said the only way to restore "sanity" to this world is for us as young people vote, not complain. There are more people in our generation that can vote and make a change to our world, including having more women in office, women as CEO's, and the LGBTQ community represented. If we don't like what's going on, the answer isn't to ignore it; it's to vote.

For me, I've seen that there does seem to be a repetitive pendulum swing in history, where Republicans and Democrats take turns controlling the White House. For instance, the past 8 years, we had a Democrat as a President through Obama, and 8 years before that, we had a Republican through President George W. Bush. Right now, we have had 2 years of a "Republican" through Trump, but Obama claims that this is a more "radical" version of Republicanism that even Republicans aren't sure really represent their party. It will be interesting to see if the November elections change the color of the House and Senate to become more Democratic. We may see that the pendulum will swing faster than it has in the past, especially if our former President continues to speak out against our current one.