Former presidents lament modern politics

Former Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush both appeared to critique the Trump administration in speeches Thursday. Though neither mentioned President Donald Trump by name, they both bemoaned the current state of politics. “Why are we deliberately trying to misunderstand each other, and be cruel to each other and put each other down? That’s not who we are,” Obama said at a Virginia campaign rally for Democratic Lt. Gov. Ralph Northam, who is running for governor. Speaking at the Bush Institute’s Spirit of Liberty forum in New York earlier in the day, Bush warned against trade protectionism and underestimating the Russian threat, and criticized the overall tone of American politics: “We’ve seen nationalism distorted into nativism and forgotten the dynamism that immigration has always brought to America. We see a fading confidence in the value of free markets and international trade, forgetting that conflict, instability, and poverty follow in the wake of protectionism.”