Barack Obama has said Americans must “soundly reject language” from any leader who “feeds a climate of fear and hatred or normalises racist sentiments” in his first public statement since mass shootings in Texas and Ohio.
In the former president’s statement on Monday, which did not mention Donald Trump directly, he also told Americans “we are not helpless” in the face of the country’s high frequency of mass shootings.
“And until all of us stand up and insist on holding public officials accountable for changing our gun laws, these tragedies will keep happening,” Obama wrote.
A shooting at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, on Saturday killed 22 people, and a second shooting outside a crowded bar in Dayton, Ohio, early on Sunday killed nine people. The suspect in the El Paso attack posted a racist, anti-immigrant screed shortly before, investigators say. The motive of the Dayton shooter, who died in the attack, is not yet clear.
Obama, like many presidents before him, has exercised caution to avoid pointed criticism of his successor. But his comments left little doubt that his call to reject the normalisation of racism referred to Trump, who has spoken disparagingly about immigrants, calling them rapists and murderers, and has decried an “invasion” at the southern border.
Trump has previously tempered his criticism of white supremacy, though he said in scripted remarks to the country on Monday that the US “must condemn racism, bigotry and white supremacy”. He also said he had directed the FBI to examine steps to identify and address domestic terrorism.
Obama noted that the El Paso shooting followed a trend of “troubled individuals who embrace ideologies and see themselves obligated to act violently to preserve white supremacy”. He advised Americans to also denounce the language of “leaders who demonise those who don’t look like us, or suggest that other people, including immigrants, threaten our way of life, or refer to other people as subhuman”.
Such language had “been at the root of most human tragedy throughout history”, Obama added, and had “no place in our politics and our public life”.