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Obama and Bush just threw some heavy punches at Trumpism

Speaking at a rally in Richmond, Virginia, Obama said, “if you have to win a campaign by dividing people, you’re not going to be able to govern them. You won’t be able to unite them later if that’s how you start.”

Without once mentioning his name, Barack Obama and George W. Bush delivered separate but equally scathing rebukes of the Trump administration Thursday, decrying the divisive politics that dominate the White House.

Speaking at a rally for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Ralph Northam in Richmond, Virginia, Obama said, “if you have to win a campaign by dividing people, you’re not going to be able to govern them. You won’t be able to unite them later if that’s how you start.”

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“We’ve got folks who are deliberately trying to make folks angry, to demonize people who have different ideas, to get the base all riled up because it provides a short-term tactical advantage,” he continued.

At an earlier rally in Newark, New Jersey, Obama called on Americans to “send a message to the world that we are rejecting a politics of division, we are rejecting a politics of fear.”

“Some of the politics we see now, we thought we put that to bed,” he said. “That’s folks looking 50 years back. It’s the 21st century, not the 19th century. Come on!”

Earlier Thursday, at an appearance in New York, Bush decried the rise of “bullying and prejudice” in public life, and the way “our discourse [has been] degraded by casual cruelty.”

“Bigotry seems emboldened,” he said. “Our politics seems more vulnerable to conspiracy theories and outright fabrication.”

“We’ve seen nationalism distorted into nativism, forgotten the dynamism that immigration has always brought to America.”

Both former presidents have refrained from public criticism of Trump, although Obama has issued statements defending his healthcare law, the Paris climate accord and denouncing the ban on Muslims entering the country.

Trump, who has yet to respond, has previously been scathing of Obama and Bush, describing both at one time as “probably the worst president” in history.