Obama's Pro-Kamala Video Backfires, Goes Horribly Wrong as Viewers Hear Message They Aren't Buying

Joy and vibes or division and hatred: Pick one.

No, this isn't about the two major political candidates this year, although you might think so if you were listening to former President Barack Obama. Instead, it's all about messaging. Which version of the Democratic Party will we see today? Will they be the party of joy, good vibes, and coolness? Or will they be the party accusing their opponent of being a literal Nazi who wants to lock you up, while simultaneously blaming them for being the divisive ones?

This narrative isn't just coming from Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz. In the final weeks of the campaign, the Democrats have been relying more on a former president — not Joe Biden, but Barack Obama — to drive this message home.

Unfortunately for them, it seems people aren’t really buying it.

Campaigning for the Harris-Walz ticket in Arizona on Friday, Obama chose to focus on, of all things, division.

"Donald Trump wants us to believe this country is hopelessly divided," Obama claimed during his speech. "He paints a picture of 'real Americans'—meaning his supporters—and everyone else as outsiders."

Obama then veered into an odd, perhaps even conspiracy-tinged, tangent about a town hall Trump attended earlier this week. The event was interrupted when a few supporters reportedly had medical emergencies, which "derailed" the event, according to The New York Times. But to hear Obama describe it, Trump just stopped answering questions.

"The whole point of a town hall is to take questions," Obama said. "But he decided to stop, and for the next half hour, he was swaying to ‘Ave Maria’ and ‘YMCA.’ People were just standing there, unsure of what was happening. Can you imagine if I did that?"

Obama continued his critique, bringing up Trump's odd claim of being "the father of IVF" ("I don't know what that means, and neither do you," Obama remarked, apparently having missed Vice President Harris’ meandering interview on Fox News earlier in the week) and mocked Trump's description of Jan. 6 as “a day of love,” which, though inaccurate, was at least closer than calling it an "insurrection."

“They made Jan. 6 sound like Woodstock,” Obama said in a clip.

The video was shared on Obama's social media, accompanied by this caption: "We don't need four more years of arrogance, bluster, and division under Donald Trump."

Apparently, Obama believes a few weeks of Trump’s arrogance, bluster, and division is acceptable, before handing over the reins to Kamala Harris for four more years.

But as some social media users quickly pointed out, Obama himself has been known to engage in divisive rhetoric:

Of course, any reaction is subject to an opposite and not necessarily equal reaction, like these:

It’s hard to forget the examples. From commenting on the arrest of Black Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. to the unrest in Ferguson, Missouri, after the shooting of Michael Brown in 2014, Obama often positioned himself as a mediator of cultural tensions, only to sometimes make things worse.

His 2012 re-election campaign was notably different from the hopeful "Yes We Can" message of 2008. Instead, it became about painting Mitt Romney as a wealthy elite who "thinks corporations are people," "kills cancer patients," and "straps dogs to car roofs."

Since leaving office, Obama’s occasional returns to the political stage have only amplified this pattern. He may speak for a brief moment about unity, but he spends far longer blaming Republicans for the nation’s division. Even in this election cycle, he’s managed to alienate some minority voters by lecturing “the brothers” about their supposed lack of turnout to support Kamala Harris.

It seems, even eight years after America elected Donald Trump as his successor, Obama still doesn’t fully grasp why it happened.