Barack Obama was the 44th President of the United States, serving from 2009 until 2017. The former president was born on Aug. 4, 1961, in Honolulu. His parents, Barack H. Obama Sr. and Stanley Ann Dunham, divorced when Obama was 2 years old. 

Obama’s mother married a man from Indonesia, where the young boy spent much of his earliest years before returning to Honolulu to live with his grandparents. 

Obama attended Occidental College in Los Angeles for two years before he transferred to Columbia University to study political science and international relations. He later went to Harvard Law School in 1988. 

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After his first year of school, he began working at a law firm in Chicago, Sidley & Austin, where he met his future wife Michelle. The two got married in 1992 and welcomed two children together, Malia and Natasha “Sasha.”

Obama’s political tenure began in 1996, when he was elected to the Illinois Senate. In 2004, he was elected to the U.S. Senate, and gave the highly anticipated keynote address at the Democratic National Convention. 

In 2007, Obama announced that he would be running for president. He secured the Democratic nomination against former Republican Senator John McCain. Obama ran with the slogan “Change we can believe in.”

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Obama defeated McCain and became the 44th President of the United States, the first African American elected to the position. He was inaugurated on Jan. 20, 2009.

After four years as president, he ran for a second term. In 2012, he was elected over former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney. With the conclusion of his second term in office, he delivered his farewell address to the nation on Jan. 10, 2017, from Chicago. 

Before, during and after his eight years as president, Obama penned four novels. His first, “Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance” was published in 1995. He later published “The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream” in 2006. 

In 2010, his book “Of Thee I Sing: A Letter to My Daughters” was released. “A Promised Land,” by Obama, hit bookshelves in 2020. 

A Georgia activist stole the show after being introduced by former President Trump at his rally in Atlanta Saturday.

Trump invited Michaelah Montgomery up on stage toward the end of his speech at the Georgia State University Convocation Center. He introduced Montgomery by explaining he met her at a restaurant this year.

Trump said Montgomery, who attended Clark Atlanta University, had recognized him in public and commended him for funding historically Black colleges and universities.

“She looks at me, says ‘It’s President Trump. You saved my college.’ And I said, ‘How the hell do you know that?’ … This one is so smart, so sharp,” Trump recalled.

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“She grabbed me. She gave me a kiss,” he added. “I said, ‘I think I’m never going back home to the first lady.’” 

“You were supposed to keep that quiet,” Montgomery laughed.

The former president commended Montgomery, describing her as “incredible” with a “tremendous future,” and told her he would do “whatever I can to help you,” before giving her the podium.

“I do want to add on to some of the remarks that were made by others,” the conservative activist began. “And we do need to do our best to get the message out there. The fight is nothing if all we do is talk about it amongst ourselves.”

Montgomery added that she was a founder of an organization called Conserve the Culture, which helps “mobilize the HBCU students so that they may get this [conservative] message.”

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Montgomery attended Clark Atlanta University and had recognized him in public recently. (Fox News)

“Nobody needs this message more than my folks, so do y’all care for real?” Montgomery said to the cheering audience. “Are y’all with us for real?

“I’ma give it back to Big T.”

The rally took place days after Trump was criticized by the White House for statements he made at the recent National Association of Black Journalists convention about Vice President Kamala Harris’ racial identity.

“She was always of Indian heritage, and she was only promoting Indian heritage,” Trump said. “I didn’t know she was Black until a number of years ago when she happened to turn Black. And now she wants to be known as Black. So, I don’t know, is she Indian or is she Black?”

At the end of her speech, Montgomery mentioned her organization, Conserve the Culture. (Fox News)

On Wednesday, Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson praised Trump for “answering tough questions” at the conference.

“I commend my friend @realdonaldtrump for going into a hostile environment at @NABJ today and answering tough questions,” Carson said in a post on X.

Fox News Digital reached out to the Trump campaign, but did not immediately hear back.

When I was an officer in the U.S. military, I abstained from voting in national elections, one small way to keep the armed forces nonpartisan. Now, to uphold that same value and prevent the military from becoming a political tool, I believe that in November, everyone — civilians, service members, veterans, everyone — should vote for whoever has the best chance to keep Donald Trump out of office.

This is not a political statement. This is a strategic judgment based on fitness to lead — both to defend the United States and to protect the civilian-military balance that has enabled our nation to become the greatest in history.

Today’s U.S. military is the world’s most powerful weapon, and in the wrong hands it could become a potent political tool as well. This weapon must not be placed under an unfit commander in chief, as the former president showed himself to be during the previous administration and as he has vowed to be again if he regains power.

I am neither a Democrat nor a Republican, but an American who has fought in the forces that guard our country and our way of life, in the words of our military’s Code of Conduct. I fought in Iraq, earned two Bronze Stars and taught military strategy at West Point. My commitment to military values and nonpartisanship hasn’t changed since I rejoined civilian life. What’s changed is the choice presented in American politics. There really isn’t one, because one of the two major-party presidential candidates is clearly, demonstrably, irredeemably unfit to serve as commander in chief.

Only one candidate has suggested the execution of a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Only one candidate has called our war dead — specifically, the Marines who fell at Belleau Wood in France during World War I — “suckers” and “losers.”

Only one candidate has suggested putting NASCAR drivers and college coaches in critical national security positions now held by lifelong military professionals who serve as generals and admirals.

All those are awful enough.

But what settles the question altogether is the certainty that former President Trump would end the military’s bedrock contract with the American people: nonpartisanship. He tried last time and came dangerously close.

Nonpartisanship isn’t simply a nice tradition. It’s the two-factor authentication that’s been at the heart of our nation’s defense for decades. The former president instead wants military leadership that mimics the Nazi high command.

“You f— generals, why can’t you be like the German generals?” Trump complained to his chief of staff, retired Gen. John Kelly, in 2018. Trump clarified that he wanted generals who were “totally loyal” and “yes-men,” like the Nazi commanders under Adolf Hitler.

Since America’s founding, there’s been a tension between the military and the rest of the nation’s leadership. The monopoly on violence is necessary. But monopoly means placing immense lethal power in a small, select group.

James Madison worried that “armies kept up under the pretext of defending, have enslaved the people.” But the Revolution persuaded George Washington that a competent standing military was necessary for the country’s survival.

Over time a bargain solidified. America permitted a professional military, not loyal to a party or a president, but to all the people through an oath to uphold the Constitution. The country even granted a certain amount of autonomy in strategic matters. In exchange, the military would remain nonpartisan. It would work to earn the nation’s trust and subordinate itself to civilian leadership. Military leaders engage in an “unequal dialogue” with their civilian superiors, in scholar Eliot Cohen’s phrase. This preserves the best military advice possible while staying deferential to America’s civilian leaders. There is, of course, occasional friction between presidents and generals — well worth it to maintain this pillar of national defense.

Trump wanted to destroy that pillar. Given a second term, he probably would. In its place he would enforce a subservience that would end the ability of America’s military to provide its best (or much of any) advice on peace and war. Trump would deploy the military as a political prop in service of his own brand, as he already tried to do. And he would reshape the military and the national security apparatus so that Trumpists would rise and others would not. His second term would be staffed by those prepared to “rigorously review all general and flag officer promotions” based on pro-Trump partisan qualifications, as described in the Project 2025 playbook.

This very same mistake was an enormous Nazi failure: Hitler broke the German generals, and so his decisions went unchecked and included some of the worst strategic moves in the history of warfare.

The immediate threat of a modern commander in chief who favors the Nazi approach would be the inappropriate use of military force on America’s streets (and perhaps even at polling places). The longer threat for this kind of recklessness is unknowable but foreseeable: eroding remaining trust in the military, eviscerating the civilian-military balance, ending America’s centuries-long success story.

“It is easy to destroy an organization,” wrote retired Adm. William McRaven, former commander of U.S. Special Operations Command, “if you have no appreciation for what makes that organization great.” McRaven penned those words five years ago, during the former president’s first term in office, and ended by suggesting that if nothing were to change, someone else must serve as commander in chief.

Nothing about Trump has changed. There is only one choice on Nov. 5.

ML Cavanaugh recently retired after 25 years in the U.S. Army. He co-founded the Modern War Institute at West Point. @MLCavanaugh