Obama says Biden victory won’t be enough to stop US ‘truth decay’

Idea that ‘truth doesn’t matter’ has accelerated under Trump, says former president

Obama says Trump has fuelled division and distrust, adding it has been ‘good for his politics’ (Getty Images)

Former president Barack Obama has said that Joe Biden’s victory in the US election will only be the beginning of a reversal of the culture of division and “truth decay” which has accelerated during the presidency of his successor Donald Trump.  

Promoting his new memoir in an interview with BBC News, Mr Obama said the US has a tough task at hand to reverse the culture of "crazy conspiracy theories" that have been exacerbated by some US media outlets and “turbocharged by social media”.

"It'll take more than one election to reverse those trends," the former president said.

He blamed Mr Trump for fanning the flames of division, anger and resentment in rural and urban America as it was “good for his politics".

“Most disconcertingly, what we’ve seen is what some people call truth decay, something that’s been accelerated by outgoing President Trump, the sense that not only do we not have to tell the truth, but the truth doesn’t even matter,” said Mr Obama.

He also called the spread of online misinformation a contributing factor to the issue, and said efforts to curtail fake news through fact-checking reports are not enough as “falsehoods had already circled the globe” by the time the truth is out.  

"I think at some point it's going to require a combination of regulation and standards within industries to get us back to the point where we at least recognise a common set of facts before we start arguing about what we should do about those facts," he said.

Mr Obama had been a passionate campaigner for his former vice president Mr Biden in the run up to the US election, and is now calling on Mr Trump to step aside and allow a transition process to begin. 

In a series of interviews this weekend, he underscored the need for a “common set of facts”, as well as structural change, to tackle the polarisation of the nation.

And said he sees hope in the “sophisticated” attitudes of the next generation, urging young people to cultivate a cautious sense of optimism that the world can change.

Mr Obama has done a series of interviews on the release of his new book, “A Promised Land,” which will be released on 17 November. The memoir is about Mr Obama’s childhood and political rise, before the historic 2008 campaign.