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Former President Barack Obama stepped back into the political arena in 2018 after being relatively silent in 2017.
- Former President Barack Obama avoided criticizing his successor and rarely appeared in public in 2017.
- Obama sought to respect the tradition of the peaceful transition of power.
- But in 2018, Obama stepped back into the political arena, gradually ramping up his criticism of Trump and the Republican Party over the course of the year.
Former President Barack Obama and President Donald Trump have been political enemies for years.
Trump was deeply critical of Obama's presidency, and infamously perpetuated a conspiracy theory widely condemned as racist regarding Obama's place of birth.
During the 2016 election, Obama slammed Trump for his routine dismissal of facts and his temperamental disposition as the lame duck president campaigned for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. After Trump won, however, Obama changed his tone as he sought to respect the tradition of the peaceful transition of power.
Read more: Obama and Trump have a chilly but civil reunion at George H.W. Bush's funeral
In Trump's first year, the former president avoided criticizing his successor and rarely appeared in public, even as Democrats craved his voice and input amid an array of controversial statements and policies from the White House.
Obama stepped back into the political arena in 2018, however, gradually ramping up his criticism of Trump and the Republican Party over the course of the year.
The former president often employed a tactic of attacking Trump without explicitly stating his name, but abandoned that closer to the 2018 midterms and began issuing direct rebukes of Trump.
Here are Obama's most political moments in 2018, the year he returned to