Beautiful Virgin Islands

Thursday, Nov 20, 2025

0:00
0:00

Obama says presidents shouldn’t watch TV and should stay off social media

President Barack Obama spoke at an event on Wednesday in San Francisco hosted by software company Splunk. Obama discussed how tech can help play a role dealing with critical issues like climate change and health care. The event came a day after President Trump held his first Bay Area fundraiser.

President Barack Obama didn’t mention Donald Trump by name on Thursday during a talk in San Francisco, but he clearly referenced his successor when he suggested that two things a president should avoid doing are watching TV and social media.

Even without invoking Trump’s name, he was taking on the agenda of the current president in discussing the urgency of addressing climate change. Speaking at an event hosted by software company Splunk, Obama hit on a number of areas where technology advancements can benefit society, including health care and even traffic congestion.

But, following up on a key issue from his eight-year presidency, Obama said there’s no bigger challenge facing us than climate change. While technology can solve certain issues related to the changing environment, ultimately “it’s a moral decision that we make,” he said.

“There are a handful of issues that if we don’t get right we have real problems,” Obama said. “Climate change is a big problem.”

His keynote comes a day after President Trump held his first fundraiser in the Bay Area since becoming president in 2017. The $1,000 to $50,000-per-plate event on Tuesday was at the home of Sun Microsystems co-founder Scott McNealy, and attracted protesters with a giant inflatable baby Trump.

One of Trump’s key efforts is rolling back Obama-era regulations, most notably those related to environmental rules. The president said on Wednesday that his administration is barring California from setting its own auto emissions standards, setting up the latest struggle over the administration’s push to unravel restrictions on businesses. California has been insulated from many of Trump’s efforts because the state insisted on setting its own strict standards under a federal waiver issued in 2013.

Society has to make the decision “that we are going to mitigate as much as possible this problem that we’ve created so our kids and grandkids and the human family can manage,” Obama said.

It’s a friendly audience for Obama. In 2008 and 2012, he won more than 83% of the vote in San Francisco County and at least two-thirds of the vote in every nearby county. Those numbers stayed fairly consistent in 2016, when Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton captured close to 85% of the vote in San Francisco, though she lost the election.

Obama’s visit to San Francisco comes as tech giants Amazon, Google, Facebook and Apple face heightened legal and regulatory scrutiny for potential anticompetitive practices and amid the continued fallout from the abuse of social platforms by foreign actors ahead of the 2016 election.

While the former president didn’t weigh in on the antitrust debate, he did offer a personal anecdote about how smartphones have been great for keeping in touch with his two daughters, who are now in college, and connecting society at large even though there’s a broader crisis in how social media is dividing people and leading to loneliness.


One-sixth of the economy


One area where he sees tremendous potential for technology is in health care and reducing the inefficiencies in the system. With health care accounting for one-sixth of the U.S. economy, we should expect much better outcomes with “very modest improvements in how we deliver customer service to people who are sick,” he said.

And we should be investing in solutions to use that money more efficiently so we’re both less sick and have more capital to spend elsewhere.

“Almost our entire federal deficit, at least when I was president, can be accounted for by what we spend on health care versus what other industrialized nations spend on health care,” Obama said.

“That’s all money that could be used for early childhood education and rebuilding roads and bridges an cleaning our water and putting young people back to work. Those are wasted resources that I think big data can really capture in a powerful way, but it does require some guardrails and thinking through what the framework is to protect patient privacy.”

Newsletter

Related Articles

Beautiful Virgin Islands
0:00
0:00
Close
A Decade of Innovation Stagnation at Apple: The Cook Era Critique
Caribbean Reparations Commission Seeks ‘Mutually Beneficial’ Justice from UK
EU Insists UK Must Contribute Financially for Access to Electricity Market and Broader Ties
UK to Outlaw Live-Event Ticket Resales Above Face Value
President Donald Trump Hosts Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman at White House to Seal Major Defence and Investment Deals
German Entertainment Icons Alice and Ellen Kessler Die Together at Age 89
UK Unveils Sweeping Asylum Reforms with 20-Year Settlement Wait and Conditional Status
UK Orders Twitter Hacker to Repay £4.1 Million Following 2020 High-Profile Breach
Popeyes UK Eyes Century Mark as Fried-Chicken Chain Accelerates Roll-out
Two-thirds of UK nurses report working while unwell amid staffing crisis
Britain to Reform Human-Rights Laws in Sweeping Asylum Policy Overhaul
Nearly Half of Job Losses Under Labour Government Affect UK Youth
UK Chancellor Reeves Eyes High-Value Home Levy in Budget to Raise Tens of Billions
UK Urges Poland to Choose Swedish Submarines in Multi-Billion € Defence Bid
US Border Czar Tom Homan Declares UK No Longer a ‘Friend’ Amid Intelligence Rift
UK Announces Reversal of Income Tax Hike Plans Ahead of Budget
Starmer Faces Mounting Turmoil as Leaked Briefings Ignite Leadership Plot Rumours
UK Commentator Sami Hamdi Returns Home After US Visa Revocation and Detention
UK Eyes Denmark-Style Asylum Rules in Major Migration Shift
UK Signals Intelligence Freeze Amid US Maritime Drug-Strike Campaign
TikTok Awards UK & Ireland 2025 Celebrates Top Creators Including Max Klymenko as Creator of the Year
UK Growth Nearly Stalls at 0.1% in Q3 as Cyberattack Halts Car Production
Apple Denied Permission to Appeal UK App Store Ruling, Faces Over £1bn Liability
UK Chooses Wylfa for First Small Modular Reactors, Drawing Sharp U.S. Objection
Starmer Faces Growing Labour Backlash as Briefing Sparks Authority Crisis
Reform UK Withdraws from BBC Documentary Amid Legal Storm Over Trump Speech Edit
UK Prime Minister Attempts to Reassert Authority Amid Internal Labour Leadership Drama
UK Upholds Firm Rules on Stablecoins to Shield Financial System
Brussels Divided as UK-EU Reset Stalls Over Budget Access
Prince Harry’s Remembrance Day Essay Expresses Strong Regret at Leaving Britain
UK Unemployment Hits 5% as Wage Growth Slows, Paving Way for Bank of England Rate Cut
Starmer Warns of Resurgent Racism in UK Politics as He Vows Child-Poverty Reforms
UK Grocery Inflation Slows to 4.7% as Supermarkets Launch Pre-Christmas Promotions
UK Government Backs the BBC amid Editing Scandal and Trump Threat of Legal Action
UK Assessment Mis-Estimated Fallout From Palestine Action Ban, Records Reveal
UK Halts Intelligence Sharing with US Amid Lethal Boat-Strike Concerns
King Charles III Leads Britain in Remembrance Sunday Tribute to War Dead
UK Retail Sales Growth Slows as Households Hold Back Ahead of Black Friday and Budget
Shell Pulls Out of Two UK Floating Wind Projects Amid Renewables Retreat
Viagogo Hit With £15 Million Tax Bill After HMRC Transfer-Pricing Inquiry
Jaguar Land Rover Cyberattack Pinches UK GDP, Bank of England Says
UK and Germany Sound Alarm on Russian-Satellite Threat to Critical Infrastructure
Former Prince Andrew Faces U.S. Congressional Request for Testimony Amid Brexit of Royal Title
BBC Director-General Tim Davie and News CEO Deborah Turness Resign Amid Editing Controversy
Tom Cruise Arrives by Helicopter at UK Scientology Fundraiser Amid Local Protests
Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson Face Fresh UK Probes Amid Royal Fallout
Mothers Link Teen Suicides to AI Chatbots in Growing Legal Battle
UK Government to Mirror Denmark’s Tough Immigration Framework in Major Policy Shift
UK Government Turns to Denmark-Style Immigration Reforms to Overhaul Border Rules
UK Chancellor Warned Against Cutting Insulation Funding as Budget Looms
×