What should the American people , especially the hundreds of millions of their voters, expect former Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Joe Biden to do against the vicious, serial law-violating, violent, corrupt, agency-dismantling Donald Trump and the crony Trumpsters who are wrecking our government and our economy?
These former presidents should mobilize the citizenry from the grassroots to the Capitol and take on the unpopular Tyrant Trump. Having sworn to uphold the Constitution and “… take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed,” they should strongly uphold their patriotic duty to resist tyranny and save our Republic and our besieged democratic institutions, and stop the assault on our civil liberties and civil rights.
Our former presidents all get along with one another. They have the stature to: 1) attract mass media; 2) raise immediately large amounts of funds for strong “Impeach Trump” citizen groups in every congressional district to increase and expand the present majority of Americans wanting to fire Trump; 3) stay the course as Trump keeps worsening his criminal dictatorship and destruction of our democracy; and 4) highlight the many programs they initiated that Trump has illegally destroyed or is dismantling.
Instead, they are living luxurious lives and are largely AWOL from connecting with the existing but overwhelmed civic opposition to Trump. Bush is painting landscapes as Trump has destroyed his AIDS program in Africa, and the Bush wing of the Republican Party . Obama has campaigned for Abigail Spanberger and Mikie Sherrill as governors of Virginia and New Jersey, respectively, satirizing Trump in some of his speeches. His present passion, however, is the March Madness basketball tournament. Clinton has left it up to wife Hillary, who wrote a guarded New York Times op-ed back on March 28, 2025, taking Trump to task for jeopardizing our national security and not “preparing for real fights with America’s adversaries.” These former presidents should mobilize the citizenry from the grassroots to the Capitol. Then there is Joe Biden, who received then-President-elect Trump and wife Melania on the morning of Jan. 20, 2025, with the gracious “welcome home.” In return, Biden got that afternoon and every day since hundreds of foul epithets from Trump, scapegoating him for almost everything he could fabricate, including solar energy and wind power projects. Delaware Joe managed a few critical replies at a Democratic Party dinner in Nebraska on Nov. 7, 2025. “Trump has taken a wrecking ball not only to the people’s house but to the Constitution, to the rule of law, to our very democracy.” Unfortunately, Biden has mostly been silent.
Credit these retired presidents with knowing the historic dangers and existing damages of the Trump Dump in Washington and around the country. They also know their supporters would be very receptive to organized, persistent leadership from them to send Trump back to Mar-a-Lago. Why are they AWOL?
First, they fear Trump’s retaliation, upsetting their comfortable lives. Trump is now deep in the quicksand of the Middle East. He is being pilloried by a million stickers at gas pumps picturing Trump pointing to the booming price per gallon and saying, “I did that.” He is openly declaring that there should be no elections in November and continues to send or keep his stormtroopers in America’s cities. An expanding police state is not exactly a credible perch for effective profanity. Show a modest bit of moxie!
A second excuse is that they have done some of what Trump is doing:
*Bush’s mass murder in the illegal war on Iraq.
*Clinton’s distracting raids abroad against innocents and his womanizing.
*Obama’s “signature strikes,” killing over 3,000 mostly young men in places like Yemen.
*Biden’s illegal co-belligerence with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s genocide in Gaza, which has taken over 600,000 civilian lives.
True enough. But people live in the present and are most worried about what Dangerous Donald is doing now to their livelihoods, freedoms, health and safety, and the consequences in casualties and their tax dollars of another endless war.
Our former presidents have no excuses. They simply lack a modicum of courage. Aristotle declared: “Courage is the first of human qualities because it is the quality which guarantees the others.” Our former presidents have no excuses. They simply lack a modicum of courage. The current political climate demands the powerful emergence of our four surviving previous presidents. The federal district courts are ruling heavily against Trump’s Injustice Department, though Trump retains a slightly weakening claim on six Supreme Court Injustices. People of all backgrounds are marching and demonstrating in huge numbers. Over the weekend, the “No Kings” rallies (he’s already a dictator) attracted millions of people nationwide.
The business community, particularly small businesses, are feeling serious harm from Trump’s tariffs, wars, canceled contracts and inflationary policies. Labor unions (notably the federal employees’ union members whose contracts he has torn up) have never been under such attack, and they are simmering with anger. The universities are also under his illegal, shakedown attacks.
What explains the mainstream media’s virtual ignoring of this abdication by these ex-presidents? The reporters mostly despise Trump, who has slandered them (calling them “deranged and demented” for starters) and has extortionately sued news organizations and journalists seeking millions of dollars and coerced settlements.
The media have reported that some ex-agency officials under the former presidents have excoriated Trump, such as Samantha Power, for closing the major, lifesaving U.S. Agency for International Development. The formidable Rohit Chopra, who directed the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau under Biden, is not reticent to verbally defend his nearly closed-down agency, which had saved consumers many billions of dollars. But they are not covering the abdication by the big guys, our former presidents. What Might We Do? I have tried in vain to find out why by calling reporters and editors. Maybe you’ll have better luck. Try calling these numbers: The Washington Post: (202) 334-6000 The New York Times: (800) 698-4637 Associated Press: (212) 621-1500 National Public Radio: (202) 513-2000 The Wall Street Journal: (212) 416-2000 Call These News Outlets The post The Deafening Abdication of Four Ex-Presidents on Trump appeared first on Truthdig .