PHILADELPHIA — Former President Barack Obama made his first in-person campaign appearance for former Vice President Joe Biden on Wednesday, speaking to a crowd at a drive-in event in South Philadelphia where supporters listened to him over the radio from inside their cars.

What You Need To Know

  • Former President Barack Obama made his first in-person campaign stops for Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden in Philadelphia on Wednesday

  • Obama called out Trump for recent reporting that claims the president has secret bank accounts in China, Britain and Ireland

  • Obama said his former Vice President has "shown himself to be a friend to the working people"

  • Biden himself has visited Pennsylvania, an important swing state with 20 electoral votes, the most out of any state this campaign

 

Obama is widely lauded as one of the Democratic party’s best speakers, and his Wednesday address delivered: The former president gave an impassioned speech, at times eliciting honks of approval from the audience, as he praised Joe Biden’s morals while simultaneously skewering President Trump for his failures of leadership.

Obama did not hold back in his condemnation of the president, lambasting Trump for recently surfaced reports from the New York Times that the president maintains private, undisclosed bank accounts in China, Britain, and Ireland. The foreign accounts do not show up on Trump’s public financial disclosures, where he must list personal assets, because they are held under corporate names.

“Can you imagine if I had had a secret Chinese bank account when I was running for re-election?” Obama asked the crowd with a laugh. “You think Fox News might have been a little concerned about that? They would have called me 'Beijing Barry.'"

The former president compared the personalities of the two candidates running for president, criticizing Trump for treating the White House like his own reality show. 

“This is not a reality show. This is reality,” Obama said. “The rest of us have had to live with the consequences of (Trump) proving himself incapable of taking the job seriously.” 

“I've sat in the Oval Office with both of the men who are running for president and they are very different people,” Obama added.

“The presidency doesn't change who you are, it reveals you are,” Obama added, saying: “Joe has shown himself to be a friend to working people.”

Obama implored Philadelphians to remember the best of America, and take their message to the polls either on or before election day. 

"America is a good and decent place,” Obama said. “But we've just seen so much noise and nonsense that sometimes it's hard for us to remember. Philadelphia, I’m asking you to remember what this country can be."

Earlier in the day, Obama met with Black male community leaders to talk about what’s at stake in the upcoming election, encouraging young voters to cast their ballots.

“I am so confident in Joe Biden and Kamala Harris surrounding themselves with people who are serious, who know what they’re doing, who are representative of all people — not just some people — and us being able to then dig ourselves out of this hole,” Obama said.

The former president also leaned on one of his own previous campaign messages: the power of hope.

"I've never lost hope over these last four years. I've been mad. I've been frustrated. But I haven't lost hope and the reason is because I never expected progress to move directly in a straight line,” Obama told the crowd, adding: “We are resilient and strong enough to push through what we’ve seen in the last four years.” 

The significance of the roundtable was difficult to miss: The nation’s first Black president urged Black men especially not to give into apathy. The host city, Philadelphia, is among the Democratic bastions in battleground states where Black turnout four years ago fell off from Obama’s 2012 reelection in large enough numbers to flip key states to Trump’s column and deliver him the presidency.

Obama, 59, said he understood young voters’ skepticism and disinterest, recalling his own attitude decades ago. “I’ll confess, when I was 20 years old, I wasn’t all that woke,” he said, adding that young Black men are “not involved because they’re young and they’re distracted.”

But he said not voting gives away power.

“The answer for young people when I talk to them is not that voting makes everything perfect,” Obama said. “It’s that it makes things better” because politicians respond to and reflect the citizens who cast votes.

Obama’s visit to Philadelphia also underscores the significance of Pennsylvania, the swing state Biden himself has visited the most this campaign. If Trump loses the state, his path to winning reelection narrows significantly. 

Obama has already been helpful to the Biden campaign, adapting to the shift to virtual events by focusing much of his work on getting younger Americans to vote. He’s appeared on Twitch, the video game streaming platform, pushed a voter registration message on Snapchat and recorded a video alongside Joe Biden’s running mate, Kamala Harris.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.