Obama ditches diplomacy, attacks Trump at U.N. The president didn't use Trump's name. But he didn't need to.

UNITED NATIONS — There wasn’t much diplomatic about it: President Barack Obama and United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon repeatedly denounced Donald Trump and his brand of politics here as they addressed leaders from around the world Tuesday.

Three days after declaring that Trump’s candidacy is a threat to American democracy, Obama said that while globalization has its downsides, the wrong response comes “more often from the right” to produce an “aggressive nationalism, a crude populism…which seeks to restore what they believe was a better, simpler age free of outside contamination.”


He didn’t say Trump’s name. He didn’t say Make America Great Again. But he didn’t need to, as he quickly moved into attacking the Republican nominee’s proposed Mexican border wall.

“Today a nation ringed by walls would only imprison itself,” Obama said.

Obama received significant applause from the filled room as he finished.

Over the last year, Obama and top members of his administration have spent significant time talking through Trump’s rise with foreign leaders, dismissing his chances, and trying to convince them that the Republican candidate doesn’t represent a shift in American mentality that they’ve found disturbing, and believe will reshape the nation’s role within the world no matter who wins.

“There appears to be a growing conflict between authoritarianism and liberalism, and I want everyone to understand I am not neutral in that conflict,” the president said, reflecting the concerns he and others have raised with Trump and his supporters speaking admiringly of Russian President Vladimir Putin, whom he sniped is “attempting to recover lost glory through force.”

“It’s no surprise that some argue the future favors the strongman, a top-down model rather than strong democratic institutions,” Obama said. “But I believe this thinking is wrong. I believe the road of true democracy remains the better path.”

Delivering his last address to the United Nations, Obama spoke more broadly about his foreign policy record over the last eight years and the successful principles that he argued lays out for the future.

The thought of the Republican nominee standing in Obama’s spot in front of the famous green marble backdrop a year from now appeared to send a shiver through the building.

Ban warned of “gulfs of mistrust that divide the citizens from their leaders,” but also “extremists [who] push people into camps of us and them.”

Returning several minutes later to what could be read as another complaint against Trump and his style of politics, Ban said, “I say to political leaders and candidates: do not engage in the cynical and dangerous political math that says you add votes by dividing people and multiplying fear.”

“Muslims in particular are being targeted by stereotyping and suspicion that have echoes of the dark past,” Ban added.

Peter Thomson of Fiji, serving as this year’s president of the General Assembly, also complained of “xenophobia, divisive rhetoric” as he spoke to the chamber ahead of Obama’s arrival.

Both Obama and Ban, who was also addressing the General Assembly for the final time, spoke about failures, including not achieving a two-state solution in Israel nor stopping North Korea’s onward march to becoming a nuclear power. Obama touted the Iran nuclear deal, but he acknowledged that Syria remains a disaster.

Obama also pointed to what he said are legitimate problems with American politics that arguably limit his right to hold itself out as an above-the-fray authority—the amount of money in politics, entrenched partisanship, low voter turnout.

“We better strive harder to set a better example at home,” he said.

But even as he delivered his message to global problems and his issues with other leaders, his attention seemed to constantly snap back to Trump.

“You see people wrestle with concerns about immigration …. suggesting that people who look different are corrupting the character of our countries,” he said, linking this to the backward thinking of violence against gays, stopping girls from going to school or discriminating based on tribes.

Nationalism and strongman politics, Obama said, only lead to crackdowns at home and war with other countries, and that’s particularly dangerous when people aren’t committed to stopping the spread of nuclear weapons—a topic he’s previously hit Trump hard for, after the Republican said he thought perhaps Japan and South Korea should go nuclear too.

“The world is too small, we are too packed together for us to be able to resort to those old ways of thinking,” Obama said, warning that the extremism will only be exported, and “the world is too small for us to simply allow us to build a wall and prevent it from affecting our own societies.”

In his speech Saturday night to the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation dinner, Obama said Trump lacks a basic understanding of African-American history. Tuesday, he quoted Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” urging everyone to think of themselves not as dividers, but as “coworkers with god.”

The choice between Clinton and Trump, Obama said Saturday, is one between hope and fear. That’s exactly how he put it Tuesday, only lacking that official politicizing step of saying their names.

“I recognize that history tells a different story than the one I’ve laid out today. There’s a much darker, more cynical view of history that we can adopt,” Obama said. “Each of us as leaders, each nation can choose to reject those who appeal to our worst impulses and embrace those who appeal to our best. For we have shown that we can choose a better history.”