In Atlanta, Georgia, on Wednesday, October 28, 2026, former President Barack Obama said the clearest way to judge a record is to replay it: “It’s always good to play back the tape when you’ve got a record. That way you kind of know the facts.”
Obama said voters frustrated by inflation after COVID backed Donald Trump in 2024 because “they heard him promise to get costs under control” — and argued those promises have not been kept.
The Atlanta stop was part of Obama’s closing swing through battleground states in the final week before the November 3 midterm elections.
Video: AP live feed, recorded by the Zark News desk, October 28, 2026.
Context
Obama has spent the final stretch of the midterm campaign making a cost-of-living argument: that voters backed Trump in 2024 on a promise to bring prices down, and that daily costs are still out of control. The Atlanta rally, held six days before the November 3 vote, was part of a closing swing through states Democrats must hold. Georgia sits at the center of the fight for Congress, and Obama, still the party’s most in-demand campaigner, has been sent there to turn out voters. His instruction to play back the tape is his method for the whole argument: judge the president not on new promises, but on the record of the old ones.
