Gave a speech before more than a thousand students at the University of Illinois-Urbana Champaign and was a preview of the message Obama will carry into the midterm elections.

But it also represented the former President's most comprehensive condemnation of Republicans in Washington and the first time he has publicly criticized Trump by name in a speech.

He also said.."It shouldn't be Democratic or Republican to say that we don't target groups of people because of what they look like or how they pray. ... We are supposed to stand up to discrimination and we are sure as heck to stand up clearly and unequivocally to Nazi sympathizers," Obama said, an apparent rebuke of Trump telling reporters after the deadly white supremacist protests in Charlottesville, Virginia that there was good "fine people on both sides."

"How hard can that be, saying that Nazis are bad?" Obama said.

 And he slammed Trump for his treatment of the Department of Justice and FBI.