Obama briefly upstages Trump with short post-inauguration speech

Just over an hour after Donald Trump’s swearing-in, former President Barack Obama briefly upstaged his successor with a speech thanking his supporters and extolling his own political accomplishments.

In his first public remarks post-presidency early Friday afternoon, Obama gave a short speech at Joint Base Andrews, in which he recalled his successful campaigns for the Senate and the presidency, as well as his work in office.


As Obama was talking, Trump began signing orders back in Washington, and cable news networks initially carried video of both events with split screens before dropping away from Obama and fully onto the new president.

It is highly unusual for an outgoing president to give a televised speech so quickly after leaving office, and Obama had already delivered what was billed as his farewell address, last week in Chicago.

Obama seemed to acknowledge this on Friday. At the start of his remarks, Obama promised brevity and said he and his wife Michelle Obama had “really been milking this good-bye thing.”

The speech was mostly nostalgic. As he has previously, Obama described serving as president as “the privilege of my life” and said his run for office was inspired by an “abiding faith in the American people and their ability, our ability, to join together and change the country in ways that would make life better for our kids and our grandkids, that change didn't happen from the top-down, but it happened from the bottom-up.”

Sounding a note of optimism at a time when his supporters are despondent over Trump’s election, Obama also argued that his campaigns had “proved the power of hope.”

“It wasn't willful ignorance to all the challenges that America faces,” he continued. “It was hope in the face of difficulty, hope in the face of uncertainty. You proved the power of hope and throughout this process, Michelle and I, we’ve just been your frontmen and women.”