What will it take for a former president to speak out against Trump?

The stadium announcer called on the crowd to give a warm welcome to “a very special guest”. A cheer went up as basketball fans realised that Barack Obama was in their midst. The former US president rose to his feet, smiled and waved before watching the Los Angeles Clippers take on the Detroit Pistons on Wednesday night.

It was a jarringly normal scene at a profoundly abnormal time. The previous evening, Donald Trump had delivered the longest ever presidential address to Congress, a dark, divisive tirade strewn with lies and insults – he called Joe Biden the “worst president in American history” and Senator Elizabeth Warren “Pocahontas”.

Yet Biden did not respond and Obama remained silent. Former presidents Bill Clinton and George W Bush were similarly mute. Six weeks into a Trump second term that has shattered democratic norms and ruptured diplomatic alliances, it remains unclear what – if anything – might prompt the former presidents to speak out.

Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, said: “Let’s look only at Clinton and Obama: it’s almost as though they’ve washed their hands of it.

Former presidents and first ladies at the inauguration of Donald Trump at the US Capitol on 20 January 2025 in Washington DC. Photograph: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

“I’ve been calling them Pontius and Pilate,” he said, referring to the Roman governor who allowed Jesus to be crucified. “You can understand why because when you challenge Trump he goes after you and never lets up. It’s hell every single day, multiple times a day.”

Trump’s barnstorming first six weeks in office have left millions of Americans reeling. He has pardoned January 6 insurrectionists, punished journalists, imposed tariffs, sided with Russia over Ukraine, expanded presidential power and unleashed the tech billionaire Elon Musk to slash the federal government. Critics say it is time to break the emergency glass.

Struggling to find a coherent strategy, Democrats used delaying tactics to stall Trump’s cabinet nominees and heckled his address to Congress. Grassroots activists have expressed their anger and fear at town halls while demanding more direct action. Notably, former senior government officials have also gone public with their concerns.

Last month a group of five former treasury secretaries wrote a joint essay for the New York Times warning that the nation’s payment system was under attack by political actors from Musk’s “department of government efficiency”, or Doge.

Then five former defence secretaries signed a joint letter calling on Congress to hold immediate hearings on Trump’s recent firings of the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff and several other senior military leaders.

The presidents’ club has its own etiquette, however. The five men have gathered twice recently, first at the Washington national cathedral for Jimmy Carter’s state funeral, where Obama and Trump were seen conversing and even sharing a joke. Then they reunited at Trump’s inauguration, where Biden was forced to listen to his presidency being described as “a horrible betrayal”.

Since then all the ex-presidents have resisted the temptation to stage a significant intervention. Sabato believes that one factor is an awareness that Trump – and his vituperative supporters – would be sure to strike back, including at family members such as Hillary Clinton, a former first lady and secretary of state who ran against Trump in the 2016 election.

“Bill Clinton is close to 80 and he’s been attacked a lot in his lifetime,” Sabato said. “I’m not sure he wants any more of it and then there’s Hillary – he has to realise that Trump would go after her too. With Obama, the more I think about it, the more I believe that little friendly chat at Jimmy Carter’s funeral either was part of Obama’s plan or, once it happened, he decided to capitalise on it and keep his mouth shut so that he wouldn’t be the target again.”

He added: “It’s unpleasant. Trump unleashes this army of assholes and we’ve all experienced them on Twitter and in other ways. I get it. But I think they have an obligation to do more.”

All living presidents attending the funeral for former president Jimmy Carter. Photograph: Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images

Certainly the former presidents’ feeds on the X social media platform do not convey a sense of a nation in crisis. Bill Clinton has posted tributes to political figures who died in recent weeks, although Hillary Clinton has been more combative, for example by responding to the suspension of offensive cyber operations against Russia with sarcasm: “Wouldn’t want to hurt Putin’s feelings.”

Bush does not have an X account, although his Texas-based presidential centre this week posted an article headlined, “America First should not put Russia second”, condemning Trump and Vice-President JD Vance for attacking Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

Obama’s X account, which has more than 130 million followers, did post a New York Times article by Samantha Power, former administrator of USAid, decrying Trump’s cuts to the international development agency. But it then offered congratulations to the Philadelphia Eagles on their Super Bowl win and a Valentine’s day message to his wife, Michelle, who did not accompany him to Carter’s funeral, the inauguration or Wednesday’s basketball game in California.

Biden has kept a low profile since flying out of Washington on 20 January apart from signing with a Los Angeles talent agency. His X feed includes congratulations to the new Democratic National Committee chair, Ken Martin, reactions to the release of Hamas hostages, a Valentine’s message to wife Jill, reflections on Black History Month, a picture of his beloved Amtrak train service and a tribute to the late congressman Sylvester Turner.

It is not hard to imagine how Biden must have seethed as Trump bullied and berated Zelenskyy in the Oval Office last week and threatened to tear up the 80-year transatlantic alliance that Biden strove to renew. Yet he offered no public reaction.

David Litt, an author and former Obama speechwriter, said: “There’s the question of is this protocol or is this patience. Protocol is pretty clearly out the window at this point, including Trump spending a good chunk of his address to Congress bashing Joe Biden. That is just not done and yet it’s done now.

“Certainly Trump was not shy about criticising the current administration when he was an ex-president. I suspect that in 2029, if he is still physically able to tweet what he thinks about whoever’s in office, he will do so.”

The funeral of George HW Bush. Photograph: Pool

The death of George HW Bush in 2018 left his son, George W Bush, as the only living Republican president apart from Trump himself, raising the question of when Bush could join Clinton, Obama and Biden in a powerfully symbolic show of bipartisanship.

Litt added: “You get one moment when that has the greatest impact so you want to pick that moment carefully. Trump going further in selling out our allies and also forging a new alliance with Putin and Russia to me sounds like the kind of thing that might cross a line where a bipartisan group of former presidents would say this isn’t right.”

There is traditionally reluctance among presidents to criticise a successor, especially during the opening honeymoon period. However, history is littered with exceptions to the rule.

Theodore Roosevelt lambasted William Taft in a series of speeches, even though Roosevelt promoted Taft as his successor in 1909. Carter eviscerated Ronald Reagan, who beat him in 1980, for sending arms to Iran in hopes that Americans held captive in Lebanon would be released.

Clinton had a dig at his successor, George W Bush, for failing to achieve democratic progress in Iraq, saying in a 2007 interview: “The point is, that there is no military victory here.” Bush, in turn, reportedly told a closed-door meeting in 2015 that Obama’s decision to lift sanctions on Iran was a mistake.

Obama denounced his successor Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020 as an “absolute chaotic disaster” during a conversation with ex-members of his administration. He also warned that the “rule of law is at risk” under the 45th president.

But none of it compared with Trump’s constant and vicious attacks on Biden during the Democrat’s four years in the White House. Trump mocked his successor as “Crooked Joe” and “Sleepy Joe” and claimed that he had caused “more damage than the last 10 worst presidents combined”.

Whether a return of fire from Biden, who left office with an approval rating in the 30s and could be accused of being a sore loser, would benefit his party at this moment is questionable. Kurt Bardella, a Democratic strategist, said: “The answer for Democrats is not backwards. It’s not in the past. It’s got to be somewhere forward-looking and that’s what they’ve got to figure out here.”

Bardella said of the former presidents: “If I were them I would get behind someone right now and say this is the guy or girl that I believe in. Stop playing the ‘I don’t want to step on anyone’s toes or prematurely step out of line’. We don’t have time for that crap. Get in the game or don’t ever talk again. If you don’t have anything to say now, while this is going before our very eyes, I don’t want to hear from you ever again.”