Obama warns that Trump's actions threaten US democracy

And he shared an intimate part of his own experiences and spiritual self in explaining to the country why Black Americans were upset at the acquittal in the shooting of Trayvon Martin and in breaking into "Amazing Grace" while eulogizing parishioners at a Charleston, South Carolina, church hit by a mass shooting in 2015.

But Obama's speech for Lewis was urgent and in the tones of an activist, not a healer or the optimist who once declared there is "not a Black America" nor a "White America."

It brought into the open a clash between the nation's first Black president and the one who has made his name with a racist "birther" campaign against Obama and who is running for reelection wrapped in the Confederate flag and defending monuments to Civil War generals who fought to preserve slavery.

Obama also offered the most prominent accounting so far of the racial awakening following the death of George Floyd with a policeman's knee on his neck at a time when Trump is trying to incite a White backlash to the protests by painting the US as in the grip of a wave of leftist "fascism" and "terrorists."

While Obama's speech offered liberals the kind of inspiration they have lacked since he left office, his reappearance could also serve to embolden voters who saw in Trump a vehicle for their backlash against Obama's presidency.

There are already complaints on conservative Twitter that Obama hijacked the funeral to mount a divisive political speech -- an ironic view considering Lewis' life story.

Meanwhile, Trump did not travel to honor Lewis, a man who he once decried as "talk, talk, talk, -- no action." But two other ex-presidents chose their side of history -- Republican George W.

Bush and Democrat Bill Clinton also spoke at the service.

The tweet that echoed 'round the world

The day began with Trump floating the idea of delaying the election and recycling the lie that mail-in voting is prone to massive fraud -- in a tweet that almost everyone who has followed his presidency had expected.

Obama, in eulogizing Lewis, a civil rights hero who was beaten to the edge of death while securing voting rights for African Americans, then placed Trump directly in the lineage of old Deep South bigots, a stunningly explicit move that branded Trump's race-baiting campaign a direct threat to the republic.

"Bull Connor may be gone.

But today we witness with our own eyes police officers kneeling on the necks of Black Americans," Obama said, in remarks that belied the caution on race he had mostly observed while in office and identified synergy between the civil rights era and the Black Lives Matter movement.

"George Wallace may be gone.

But even as we sit here, there are those in power that are doing their darnedest to discourage people from voting -- by closing polling locations, and targeting minorities and students with restrictive ID laws, and attacking our voting rights with surgical precision, even undermining the Postal Service in the run-up to an election that is going to be dependent on mailed-in ballots so people don't get sick."

In what may turn out to be the most politically significant line of his eulogy for Democrats, Obama called for Senate revisions to end partisan gerrymandering and to make sure that everybody's vote finally counts.

"And if all this takes eliminating the filibuster -- another Jim Crow relic -- in order to secure the God-given rights of every American, then that's what we should do."

'The ballots are all missing'

Less than three hours later, Trump walked into the White House briefing room and again decried mail-in ballots.

"Smart people know it," Trump said.