His name wasn’t mentioned once in the address, but it’s clear to whom President Barack Obama was speaking during his last planned speech on national security—the guy who has reportedly had only one national security briefing since his election last month.
“We’re a nation that believes freedom can never be taken for granted and that each of us has a responsibility to sustain it,” Obama said Tuesday (from the MacDill Air Force base in Tampa, Fla.). “The universal right to speak your mind and to protest against authority, to live in a society that’s open and free, that can criticize a president without retribution,” he continued, in an apparent jab at Trump’s tendency to threaten legal action against his critics.
In his speech, Obama defended his legacy from hawks and liberals, saying he’d struck the right balance in his foreign policies, and encouraged his successor to do the same.
...Obama zeroed in on several areas where Trump had promised to reverse current policy. Presented as a numbered list, it felt at times like an inventory of the achievements Obama felt were most vulnerable.
Obama defended the Iran nuclear agreement as an international effort that made the world safer ― knowing that in a little over a month, Trump will have the ability to unilaterally scrap years’ worth of diplomatic wrangling.
Obama also noted that as soon as he entered office he banned torture as a form of interrogation.
While campaigning, Trump repeatedly said he would command subordinates to use waterboarding “and worse” to extract information from enemies ― but that move would likely face resistance within the military and intelligence community, and would run counter to U.S. and international law.
In his speech, Obama said using the American court system was the preferable way to deal with terrorists.