After President Donald Trump went on a Twitter tirade about his predecessor, former President Barack Obama took to social message with a pared-down response.
“Vote,” Obama tweeted, posting similar entreaties on Facebook and Instagram.
Earlier, Trump retweeted his accusation of “Obamagate” and demanded Senate Republicans call on the former president to testify on Capitol Hill about "the biggest political crime and scandal in the history of the USA" and claiming Obama "knew EVERYTHING."
The escalating tension comes as Republicans focus on watchdog reports surrounding a shadowy surveillance court and have targeted Obama-era officials for scrutiny while the Justice Department moves to drop its case against former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn.
The Trump administration on Wednesday sent lawmakers a declassified list of Obama administration officials who had asked for documents that led to Flynn’s identity being “unmasked” in intelligence reports.
National security officials can seek to reveal the identity of people who had conversations subject to government surveillance — known as “unmasking.”
Trump also lashed out at Obama on Sunday following his criticism of the Justice Department’s decision to drop the case against Flynn. In a call that was subsequently leaked, Obama warned the move to drop the Flynn case threatened the “rule of law.”
In other tweets, Trump has promoted his coined term “Obamagate” and retweeted a supporter’s declaration that Obama was “the first Ex-President to ever speak against his successor.”
According to The Hill, former Presidents George W. Bush, Bill Clinton Jimmy Carter, Gerald Ford and Dwight Eisenhower all criticized administrations that followed their own.
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