Obama to intervene midway with the speech of Illinois

The speech at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign precedes the first events of the Obama campaign: a rally for a handful of Democratic candidates in Congress Saturday in California and an event for Richard Cordray, Democratic candidate for the government from Ohio. Thursday.

Obama is also organizing country trips to Pennsylvania in September, said an Obama official, as well as a fundraiser in New York for the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, an organization run by the former Attorney General Eric Holder, a long time friend of Obama.

"We thought it was important to find a place where he could find a compelling and rational argument outside the more chaotic appearances of the campaign this fall," said the advisor. "The speech will set a framework and its message for the fall, and it will set out its point of view about where we are and where we are going from here."

The speech will be "a sharp critique" of the current state of affairs in Washington, said an Obama advisor, in which the Democratic heavyweight will be "a lot more, a lot more pointed at what's at stake right now" take their responsibilities seriously. "

Obama's speech in the auditorium of 1300 people at the university has attracted considerable interest from school students, according to the university spokesman Jon Davis, who said he received about 22,000 ticket requests.

Obama spent much of the year 2018 getting away from the political fray, focusing on writing his book and raising money for his post-presidential foundation. The distance has annoyed some Democrats, who believe that their most powerful weapon is out of the ways to maintain the decorum that has long since left politics.

Obama has made a few appearances since Trump took office – including a fundraiser for the Democratic National Committee earlier this year – but the Trump era has complicated the post-presidency of Obama. A series of past presidents have avoided criticizing their successors, and Obama has tried to retain this tradition since he left office in January 2017.

Trump has not honored this tradition and has shown little respect for his predecessors, denigrating them regularly on Twitter, in the media and at rallies. The latest Obama incursion into politics is likely to ignite Republicans, including Trump.

An Obama office official said before the speech that they could not say if the former president would talk about Trump directly in Illinois but added that "that he mentions it by his name, it will be very clear who he is talking about. "