Former President Barack Obama has mostly avoided direct criticism of President Donald Trump, but that may change on Tuesday if the president announces his intention to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, according to a source close to Obama.
Obama's statement would be issued through Facebook, with links to Twitter, the source told Politico, if Trump's expected announcement that he plans to terminate the DACA initiative occurs Tuesday, the website reported on Monday.
Obama launched the program through the use of executive actions in June 2012, promising before his re-election that he would protect "Dreamers," or people brought into the United States by parents who were illegal immigrants.
Trump had said in April that dreamers should "rest easy," and that he did not want to deport them.
The former president has more than 94 million followers on Twitter, and said in his last presidential press availability that he would speak out if Trump decided to end DACA.
At that time, he said he felt morally compelled to speak out against "efforts to round up kids who have grown up here and for all practical purposes are American kids, and send them someplace else, when they love this country."
According to Politico, Obama's inner circle believes the president must choose his battles when rejoining the national debate, and he wants to follow the traditions set by his predecessors and to allow other Democrats to take on the fight against the president.
Obama said in April that the best way he can help is to "prepare the next generation of leadership to take up the baton and to take their own crack at changing the world."
The former president did denounce efforts to dismantle Obamacare, but did not mention Trump by name. Also, his tweet following the violence in Charlottesville set records as the most shared message on Twitter, but it quoted Nelson Mandela and did not directly criticize the president's response to the protests.
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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