Former President Barack Obama has activated troll mode with a comment that could be seen as a pointed dig at 79-year-old President Donald Trump.
Speaking at London’s 02 Arena on Wednesday, Obama’s discussion with host, British historian David Olusoga, moved into the topic of aging world leaders.
“It’s fair to say that 80 percent of the world’s problems involve old men hanging on who are afraid of death and insignificance, and they won’t let go,” Obama said. “They build pyramids, and they put their names on everything and they get very anxious about it.”
“History is not short of those figures,” Olusoga said, adding: “Neither is the present.”
Aging leaders is a theme Obama has touched on in the past. Speaking at a private event in Singapore in 2019, he said “If you look at the world and look at the problems, it’s usually old people, usually old men, not getting out of the way.”
“It is important for political leaders to try and remind themselves that you are there to do a job,” Obama continued. “But you are not there for life, you are not there in order to prop up your own sense of self-importance or your own power.”
The Daily Beast has contacted Obama’s office for comment.
It comes as Obama, 64, was included in Trump’s new “Presidential Walk of Fame” in the White House Rose Garden, where Joe Biden was represented by a photograph of an autopen.
The “An Evening with President Barack Obama” event, which was attended by 14,000 people, also saw Obama directly attack Trump’s attempt to link Tylenol used during pregnancy with autism on Monday.
OBAMA: It’s fair to say that 80% of the world’s problems involve old men hanging on who are afraid of death and insignificance, and they won’t let go. They build pyramids, and they put their names on everything. They get very anxious about it. pic.twitter.com/POWcEpyYGr
— Acyn (@Acyn) September 25, 2025
“We have the spectacle of my successor in the Oval Office making broad claims around certain drugs and autism that have been continuously disproved,” Obama told the London crowd.
“The degree to which that undermines public health, the degree to which that can do harm to women who are pregnant, the degree to which that creates anxiety for parents who do have children who are autistic—which, by the way, itself is subject to a spectrum. And a lot of what is being trumpeted as these massive increases actually have to do with a broadening of the criteria across that spectrum so that people can actually get services and help.“
“All of that is violence against the truth,” he added.
Obama also called out the current tendency in the U.S. to believe that “‘we the people’ is just some people, not all people—and where there are some pretty clear hierarchies in terms of status and who ranks where.”
He added that “creeping authoritarian tendencies” must be fought.
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