Barack Obama, former president of US on Wednesday said that Donald Trump as someone who never took his presidency seriously..

Obama said that on handing over the White House to Trump in 2017, he thought the Republican “might show some interest in taking the job seriously; that he might come to feel the weight of the office and discover some reverence for the democracy that had been placed in his care.”

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“But he never did,” Obama said, according to excerpts of his speech released early.

As a result, Trump has left America’s “worst impulses unleashed, our proud reputation around the world badly diminished, and our democratic institutions threatened like never before,” Obama said.

Former first lady Hillary Clinton, who lost the 2016 presidential election to Trump, will also address the convention, which has been forced due to coronavirus safety measures to be staged almost entirely online.

Others on the bill include Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, who unsuccessfully challenged Biden for the nomination, and Nancy Pelosi, speaker of the House of Representatives.

Obama took a back seat during the hotly contested Democratic primaries but is now throwing his still considerable sway behind Biden’s campaign.

“Tonight, I am asking you to believe in Joe and Kamala’s ability to lead this country out of dark times and build it back better,” he will say in his upcoming speech.

On Monday, addressing the opening night of the US Democratic convention, Michelle Obama, the wife of former president said in a blunt rejection of the Trump administration, “Whenever we look to this White House for some leadership, or consolation, or any semblance of steadiness, what we get instead is chaos, division and a total and utter lack of empathy”.

“Let me be as honest and clear as I possibly can: Donald Trump is the wrong president for our country”, she further added.

Biden, 77, the former Delaware senator who served as Obama’s vice president for eight years, was officially nominated on Tuesday to take on Trump in the November 3 election.

Ahead in the polls, he will deliver an acceptance speech on Thursday at the conclusion of the four-day convention, which was to have been held in the battleground state of Wisconsin but was shifted to an online format because of the COVID-19 outbreak.

Last week, in a brazen attack on the vice president nominee, Trump called Kamala Harris the “most horrible” member of the US Senate and said he was “surprised” Joe Biden had picked her as his running mate.

The president grudgingly acknowledged late in his 2016 presidential campaign that Obama was American-born.

Trump has chosen the White House South Lawn as the location for his acceptance speech — a controversial decision given that presidents are legally required to separate their campaigning from taxpayer-funded governing.

Since then, Trump has faced accusations of racism, and has embraced other conspiracies.