Barack’s final goodbye: President Obama’s emotional farewell speech

Barack Obama made an emotional farewell speech to comfort and encourage a country faced with economic changes, persistent security threats and, of course, the election of Donald Trump.

Obama’s valedictory speech, delivered in his home city of Chicago, was a public meditation on the trials and triumphs, promises kept and promises broken that made up his eight years in the White House.

He and his wife Michelle hugged former aides and other audience members long after the speech ended.

Reflecting on the corrosive recent political campaign, Obama, 55, said America’s great potential ‘will be realised only if our democracy works. Only if our politics reflects the decency of our people.

‘Only if all of us, regardless of our party affiliation or particular interest, help restore the sense of common purpose that we so badly need right now’.

Obama also paid a touching tribute to the sacrifices made by his wife and his daughters, who were young girls when they entered the big white home in Pennsylvania Avenue and now leave as young women

Obama praised his wife for taking on her role ‘with grace and grit and style and good humour’ and for making the White House ‘a place that belongs to everybody’.
He made only passing reference to Republican Donald Trump, who will replace him in just 10 days.

He vowed Trump that his administration would ‘ensure the smoothest possible transition’ just as his predecessor George Bush did for him.

But when Obama noted the imminence of that change and the crowd began booing, silencing them he said, ‘No, no, no, no, no’, adding that one of the nation’s great strengths ‘is the peaceful transfer of power from one president to the next’.

The president acknowledged ‘stark inequality’ was corrosive to America’s democratic principles, in a nod to the economic uncertainty that helped Trump win the White House.

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He said too many inner city and rural families had been left behind, convinced the ‘game is fixed against them’ and the government serves only powerful interests.
Protecting America’s way of life, he said, was the job of citizens as well as the military, adding: ‘Democracy can buckle when we give in to fear.’

And to cheers from the crowd, Obama, referring to Donald Trump’s calls for a temporary ban on Muslim immigration, said he rejected discrimination against Muslim Americans ‘just as patriotic as we are’.