Former US President Barack Obama has launched a stinging attack on Donald Trump and the “crazy stuff that is coming out of this White House”.

“This is not normal, these are extraordinary times and they are dangerous times,” Mr Obama told students at the University of Illinois.

He called for “a restoration of honesty and decency and lawfulness in our government”.

The ex-president has kept a low profile since he left office in 2017 until now.
Mr Obama told Friday’s awards ceremony in Urbana, Illinois, that he had been intending to follow the American tradition of former presidents exiting the political stage.

But in comments which are likely to enrage his successor, he launched into a searing attack on the current Republican administration.

Mr Obama warned that American democracy depended on his audience turning out to vote in the November’s congressional mid-term elections.

“Now, some of you may think I am exaggerating when I say this election is more important than any I can remember in my lifetime,” the Democrat said.

“But just a glance at recent headlines should tell you that this moment really is different.”

Mr Obama made an apparent reference to a New York Times editorial that has infuriated Mr Trump.

Its anonymous author, described as a senior Trump administration official, claimed to be with working colleagues to protect the country from the current president’s “worst inclinations”.

Mr Obama said: “They are not doing us a service by actively promoting 90% of the crazy stuff that is coming out of this White House and then saying, ’Don’t worry. We are preventing the other 10%.’”

But he also told his audience that Mr Trump was “a symptom, not the cause” of the divisions in the US.