“Here’s the thing. Everything I say you can look up.”
Nor did Obama spare the Republicans more broadly. They were were lying
when they said they wanted to protect people with pre-existing
conditions while trying to repeal the Affordable Care Act, he said, a
reference to Wisconsin’s governor, Scott Walker.
“What we have not seen before in our public life is politicians just
blatantly, repeatedly, baldly, shamelessly, lying. Just making stuff
up,” Obama said. “Calling up down. Calling black white. That’s what your
governor is doing with these ads, just making stuff up,” he said.
In
Michigan,
Obama credited the Democratic candidate Gretchen Whitmer for helping to
expand Medicaid and said “few people fought against it harder” than her
Republican opponent, the state attorney general Bill Schuette.
He said voters could trust Senator Debbie Stabenow to protect people
with pre-existing conditions because she was there to help pass his
health law. She is facing a challenge from Republican John James, whom
Obama criticised for saying he backs Trump’s agenda “2,000%”.
Obama also used the subject of Hillary Clinton’s private email server to
accuse Republicans of trying to “scare the heck out of people before
every election” and also to mock Trump about the Chinese spying on his
cellphone.
“In the last election, it was Hillary’s emails. ‘This is terrible’ ...
‘This is a national security crisis’. They didn’t care about emails and
you know how you know? Because if they did, they’d be up in arms right
now that the Chinese are listening to the president’s iPhone that he
leaves in his golf cart.”
Obama spoke about the migrant caravan from Central America bound for the
United States as another example of a Republican scare tactic.
“Now the latest, they’re trying to convince everybody to be afraid of a
bunch of impoverished, malnourished refugees a thousand miles away,” he
said. “That’s the thing that is the most important thing in this
election,” he said. “Not healthcare, not whether or not folks are able
to retire, doing something about higher wages, rebuilding our roads and
bridges and putting people back to work.”
“Suddenly,” he continued, changing his voice to a high-pitch to strike a
mocking tone: “It’s these group of folks. We don’t even know where they
are. They’re right down there.”
Referring to Trump’s promise to “drain the swamp”, Obama said “they have
gone to Washington and just plundered away”. “In Washington they have
racked up enough indictments to field a football team,” he said. “Nobody
in my administration got indicted.”
Obama’s visit to
Milwaukee was
the first time he was in the city for a political event since March
2016, when he came to celebrate enrolment numbers in the Affordable Care
Act. He did not campaign for Hillary Clinton in Wisconsin, a state she
narrowly lost and which proved crucial to Trump becoming president.
The Democrats also lostMichiganin 2016, despite Obama’s visit the day before the election.
Associated Press-