Former President Barack Obama sharply criticized Vice President JD Vance during a public discussion Thursday, accusing him of promoting a “blood and soil” view of American identity despite being married to the daughter of immigrants.

Obama made the remarks while speaking with author Malcolm Gladwell about the Reconstruction era, arguing that many of the debates that defined that period continue to shape American politics today.

“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?”

Drawing parallels between Reconstruction and current political debates, Obama pointed to disputes over voting rights following Supreme Court rulings on congressional districts and argued that one of the nation’s major political parties has embraced an exclusionary definition of American identity.

“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.”

He 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” originated in Nazi Germany and has long been associated with white nationalist ideology.

Gladwell echoed Obama’s criticism, accusing Vance of hypocrisy for advancing what he described as a nativist message while being married to Usha Vance, whose parents immigrated from India. Obama agreed with that characterization but argued that such inconsistency nevertheless reflected societal progress.

“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.

Obama’s comments appeared to reference Vance’s Independence Day address earlier this month commemorating America’s 250th birthday in New York, during which the vice president urged Americans to reject narratives that focus solely on the nation’s 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 previously took an indirect jab at 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?”

{Matzav.com}