London Daily

Focus on the big picture.
Saturday, Aug 22, 2026

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

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

0:00
0:00
Close
Petrol Bombs Set Luxury Cars Alight Outside Birmingham Wedding as Police Hunt Three Men
Bitcoin Surges Toward $80,000 as Short Squeeze and ETF Inflows Ignite Crypto Rally
Prince Harry and Co-Claimants Ordered to Pay £9.5 Million Toward Daily Mail Publisher’s Legal Costs
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle Reportedly Plan Return to Britain With Their Children
UK Court Ruling Threatens Deportation Plans for Potential Trafficking Victims to Albania
Kemi Badenoch Presses UK Government for Decisions on Rosebank and Jackdaw Oil Fields
UK Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Calls for Ban on Goods from Occupied West Bank
Andy Burnham Government to Place Civil Servants Directly in English Mayoral Offices
Met Office Warns Major El Niño Could Bring Stormier, Wetter Autumn to UK
UK Economy Gains Unexpected Momentum Ahead of Andy Burnham Government’s First Budget
Twenty-Nine US States Take Meta to Trial Over Alleged Child Addiction on Instagram and Facebook
Former Scottish National Party Executive Peter Murrell Jailed for Five Years Over £400,000 Embezzlement
Moderna and Merck's Personalized Cancer Vaccine Succeeds in Historic Late-Stage Melanoma Trial
Prince Harry and Meghan to Move Back to Britain With Their Children
England and Wales Have Fewer Than 1,800 Prison Places Left for Men
Royal Navy to Accelerate DragonFire Laser Deployment Against Growing Drone Threat
Northern Ireland Approves Five Hundred Million Pound Belfast Harbour Expansion
Great British Railways Takes Full Control of Avanti West Coast as Rail Nationalisation Reaches Final Stage
UK AI Safety Institute Calls for Mandatory Security Audits of Advanced AI Models
Scotland Secures Three Billion Pounds for Floating Offshore Wind Hub in Aberdeen
Government Overrides Local Councils to Approve Green Belt Housing Across Southern England
UK and EU Move Toward Mutual Recognition of Food Standards to Ease Cross-Channel Trade
Government Plans Multibillion-Pound Private Healthcare Expansion to Cut NHS Surgical Backlogs
Bank of England Signals Faster Rate Cuts as Inflation Falls Below the Two Percent Target
Suspected People Smuggler Arrested After Investigation Identified Him
Children's Doctors Warn That Vaping Can Lead Young People to Smoking
Hundreds of Thousands of Students Receive GCSE and Vocational Results Across England, Wales and Northern Ireland
Here Is What Can Never Happen in Your Country: Taiwan Is Giving Money to All Its People Because It Collected Too Much Tax
UK Inflation Rises to 2.9% as Energy Bills Jump
UK Issues New Conduct Guide for Asylum Seekers on Consent and Respect
Moderna Shares Surge After Positive Personalized Skin Cancer Trial Results
UK Markets Watch US National Debt Surpass Forty Trillion Dollars
UK Broadcasters Urge Government to Invest in Digital Participation and Broadband
CVC Capital Partners and Standard Life Launch Two Billion Pound Pension Risk Transfer Venture
UK Private Sector Productivity Growth Accelerates in Second Quarter
UK Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband Condemns Israeli E1 Settlement Tender
UK Watchdog Investigates Trainline, Virgin Atlantic and RED Driving School Over Hidden Fees
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle Plan Move to Private Home Outside London
UK Retail Sentiment Improves as Summer Spending Boosts Consumer Confidence
UK Aid Cuts Draw Warnings From Charities Over Humanitarian Consequences
UK Financial Conduct Authority Issues Guidance for Motor Finance Redress Scheme
UK Met Office Launches Aviation Programme to Reduce Climate Impact of Persistent Contrails
Former UK Civil Service Chief Received Record 500,000 Pound Severance Payment
West Midlands to Bring Bus Network Under Public Franchising Model
UK Government Drops Plan to Relax Affordable Housing Requirements After Backlash
UK Reaffirms Military Support for Ukraine Despite Russian Hybrid Warfare Threats
UK Technology Sector Expands Nearly 8 Percent as Digital Industry Outpaces Wider Economy
UK Drought Threatens Harvests Across England and Wales as Food Inflation Risks Persist
UK Government Pledges 442 Million Pounds to End Rough Sleeping by Christmas
UK Government Signals Willingness to Reconsider Digital Services Tax Amid US Tariff Threats
×