Former President Barack Obama criticized Vice President JD Vance during a public discussion Thursday, arguing that the current political debate over national identity reflects many of the same issues that emerged during the Reconstruction era following the Civil War, as reported by Fox News.
Obama made the remarks while speaking with author Malcolm Gladwell about Reconstruction, saying that questions surrounding citizenship, voting rights, and belonging in America remain central to the country’s political landscape.
“It’s impossible to spend a lot of time thinking about Reconstruction without reflecting on the present day, right?” Obama said.
“Because these issues are — well, they’re still there. If somebody is asking why it is relevant to talk about Reconstruction, I have to describe for them the degree to which we’re having the same arguments. The issues of: How are we going to help the freed people who’ve been enslaved? What are we going to give them to allow them to have a go at life? What does real freedom mean?”
Obama argued that similar debates continue today over voting rights and citizenship.
He pointed to recent Supreme Court decisions involving race-based congressional redistricting and criticized what he described as political messaging within one of the nation’s two major parties.
“We have a politics now that at least one of our major parties has been captured by politics that is not that subtle about suggesting that ‘We the people’ means a certain kind of people,” Obama said.
“When you have the vice president, current vice president, making a speech that is basically a blood and soil version of ‘We the people,’ that it matters who your parents were and how long they’ve been here, despite him being married to a daughter of an immigrant himself.”
Obama continued, “That echoes, then, ideas about who can be a citizen, who belongs, who gets to make decisions. So all these issues are still being debated, sometimes not as bluntly and explicitly as they have in the past, but they’re still there.”
The phrase “blood and soil” has historically been associated with Nazi Germany and white nationalist ideology.
Vice President Vance is married to Usha Vance, the daughter of Indian immigrants. During the discussion, Gladwell argued that Vance was displaying “hypocrisy” by making what he described as a “nativist argument” while being married to the daughter of immigrants.
Obama agreed with Gladwell’s assessment and suggested that hypocrisy represented a form of progress compared to attitudes from earlier periods in American history.
“That is progress. Listen, hypocrisy is progress. It is, because it means that you feel guilty enough to either lie to yourself or others. And that is better than not even thinking about the idea that maybe you’re doing something wrong,” Obama said.
Fox News Digital reported that it contacted Vance’s office for comment on Obama’s remarks.
Obama’s criticism came after one of Vance’s recent public speeches celebrating America’s 250th birthday earlier this month in New York. During those remarks, the vice president encouraged Americans to reject viewing the country solely through the lens of its historical shortcomings.
“So what I’d ask you to do, my fellow Americans, on our 250th birthday, is to reject the two-dimensional view of your fellow citizens and reject the two-dimensional view of your country. Reject that America is a place for zero-sum thinking because it is not. Our history is one of people carving a great civilization out of the wilderness. Reject the view of your nation that sees only its sins, but not its grace and its greatness. Everything that we have done, everything that we’ve done as a country, we have all done together, not as citizens divided against each other, but as a common people working towards a common future,” Vance said.
Although Obama has generally refrained from mentioning Vance by name in recent public appearances, he also criticized the vice president during the 2024 presidential campaign after then-Vice President Kamala Harris selected Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate.
“When a presidential candidate chooses a running mate, it says a lot about who they are and what kind of president they’ll be. Do they pick someone inexperienced and polarizing who will deepen our divisions?” Obama asked.
“Or do they pick someone with the judgment to make tough decisions, and the character to believe that every voice counts and everyone deserves an equal chance?”
The exchange represents one of Obama’s most direct public criticisms of Vance since he became vice president, focusing on disagreements over immigration, citizenship, and the meaning of national identity.
