Former President Barack Obama's "insufferable ego" led him to break tradition and criticize President Donald Trump during speeches in Chicago and Anaheim, John Sununu, who served as chief of staff for President George H.W. Bush, commented Monday.
"My first thought was 'what is this damn fool doing coming out of retirement to break with the tradition of not attacking sitting presidents?'" Sununu told Fox News' "America's Newsroom." "Barack Obama is breaking with 230 years of tradition. It's virtually a practice by every former president that they don't criticize their successor and they don't get into the middle of the politics of the day."
But Obama, said Sununu, was making comments because of his ego, which saw venues where he could talk about himself, and also out of fear that if Republicans hold the House and Senate, investigations will continue into the "shenanigans" of people like former FBI Director James Comey and others.
Sununu also dismissed concerns about journalist Bob Woodward's new book about Trump, particularly when paired with an opinion piece from an unrevealed source posted in The New York TImes about the Trump White House.
"History over the past year and a half has shown that those kinds of flashes in the headlines will be forgotten in about 10 days," said Sununu. "The president has an amazing capacity of shifting the agenda to what he wants...if the president does what he wants, this blue wave that the liberal press keeps talking about is not going to be a blue wave."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
© 2026 Newsmax. All rights reserved.