Trump slams Obamas’ DNC speeches for ‘getting personal’

Former President Donald Trump responded Wednesday to the Obamas’ heated criticism of him at the Democratic National Convention, casting their “personal” attacks as reason to justify his own behavior.

“Did you see Barack Hussein Obama last night taking little shots? He was taking shots at your president and so was Michelle,” Trump said at a campaign rally in Asheboro, North Carolina. “You know, they always say, ‘Sir, please stick to policy, don’t get personal,’ but they’re getting personal all night, these people.”

Later at the rally, Trump polled the crowd: “Should I get personal, or should I not get personal?” The former won by cheer volume.

Trump was responding to former President Barack Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama’s speeches Tuesday night at the DNC, where they abandoned their 2016 call for their party to “go high” above inflammatory insults and animated the convention with a venomous rebuke of the former president.

“Going small is petty, it’s unhealthy, and, quite frankly, it’s unpresidential,” Michelle Obama said to the raucous crowd. “It’s his same old con: doubling down on ugly, misogynistic, racist lies as a substitute for real ideas and solutions that will actually make people’s lives better.”

And in one split-second moment that made the audience go wild, Barack Obama went low — suggesting Trump’s size anxiety didn’t just extend to crowd sizes, while looking down at his hands.

That’s been a growing trend among Democrats, who started to stray from their political politesse after Trump won in 2016 and appear to have deserted it entirely this cycle as the Harris campaign issues snarky press releases, digs against its “weird” competitors and couch jokes aimed at taunting Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance.

Trump, meanwhile, has had almost no filter making vicious personal attacks against both Democratic and Republican political rivals, hitting them with a slew of nicknames and falsehoods — including, recently, that “Comrade Kamala” Harris is a Marxist.

Trump’s comments about the Obamas Wednesday flicked to a conspiracy he has frequently perpetuated about his predecessor over the years, using Obama’s middle name “Hussein” as a dogwhistle to suggest he is secretly Muslim.

And Trump’s personal attacks didn’t just extend to the Obamas. He slammed President Joe Biden, who said Trump puts “himself first and America last” during his own DNC speech Monday, for vacationing in Southern California: “People don’t want to see you in a bathing suit.”