“Let my final words to you, as your commander in chief, be a reminder of what it is that you’re fighting for — what it is that we are fighting for,” Obama told the assembled service members. And then he let Trump have it:
Obama’s address contrasted Trump’s vision for America with the values American soldiers have stood for, casting Trump outside the tradition of those who vanquished slavery and Nazi Germany. In one of very last sentences, Obama reminded the soldiers of their oath to protect the US Constitution against its enemies, “foreign and domestic” — a unnecessary reference that serves only to highlight that threats to American values can come from within as well as without.
This isn’t the first time a president has left office by warning of a threat inside America — think of George Washington’s farewell speech advising against “entangling alliances,” or Dwight Eisenhower coining the now-famous term “military-industrial complex” in his closing speech. But it’s one thing for such a warning to be directed at an abstract concept — and quite another for it to be directed at the 45th president of the United States
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