Fox News Hosts Slam Barack Obama’s ‘Inappropriate’ Commencement Speech

After former President Barack Obama took a veiled jab at Donald Trump during a virtual commencement address delivered for historically black colleges on Saturday, Fox & Friends hosts Pete Hegseth and Jedediah Bila lashed out at the 58-year-old ex-commander-in-chief, Raw Story reported.

Hegseth called the speech “depressing” and “inappropriate” and accused Obama of talking like a “political leftist.”

“And by the way, Barack Obama’s not all that articulate. When he reads off a teleprompter, he can be inspiring or off of a speech. But when he’s impromptu, the ums and the ahs, it’s impossible to listen to.”

Bila echoed some of Hegseth’s sentiments and said that Obama’s attack on the Trump administration was not appropriate for the venue.

“It’s supposed to be motivational, positive, it’s supposed to be about the graduates. This was not the time for what he’s doing. This was not the time to say, oh, this leadership isn’t doing a great job or adults don’t always know what they’re doing.”

As reported by Bloomberg, Obama suggested that the people running the U.S. don’t know what they’re doing. Although he didn’t mention Trump by name, his speech was widely perceived as an attack on the president and his administration. According to Obama, the coronavirus pandemic has “torn back the curtain” on the notion that the people in power are capable.

In a second commencement address on Saturday directed at high school students, Obama appeared again to take a veiled shot at the Trump administration and suggested that the adults who are in power don’t know what they’re doing.

The criticism comes after reports of a private phone call in which Obama called Trump’s coronavirus response an “absolute chaotic disaster.” Both instances were a departure from the relative silence that Obama has maintained throughout Trump’s time in office, which mirrors the precedent set by former President George W. Bush.

Recently, Obama has become a a staple of Fox News coverage as Trump and his allies push the Obamagate theory, The Guardian reported. The coverage has been pushed by Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, and Tucker Carlson — who the publication calls “opinion hosts” — as well as other personalities that focus on straight news content.

In a recent interview with Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo, Trump suggested that Obama’s alleged role in the investigation into his 2016 campaign was the most significant political crime in the history of the U.S. Critics of the theory claim that Trump and his allies are attempting to shift the narrative from his handling of the coronavirus pandemic.