Obama Says Trump Crime Crackdown ‘Not Our Idea Of America’

“We’re not at the stage where you have to be like Nelson Mandela and be in a 10×12 jail cell for 27 years and break rocks,” he said. “Right now, there’s just a little discomfort.”

The former president argued that political convictions are meaningful only when they come at a cost. “If convictions don’t cost anything, then they’re really just kind of fashion. They’re not really convictions,” Obama said.

He added that his generation had grown accustomed to steady social progress and had not often faced serious tests of those beliefs.