President-elect Donald Trump responded harshly Dec. 26 to President Barack Obama’s claim that he would have won the White House if he had been allowed to run for office a third time against Trump.
“President Obama said that he thinks he would have won against me,” the president-elect tweeted. “He should say that but I say NO WAY! – jobs leaving, ISIS, OCare, etc.”
Trump referred to the off-shoring of jobs, flaws of the Obamacare medical insurance law, and the rise of the terrorist group ISIS as problem issues separating himself from the Democrats.
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Following the anti-Obama tweet, Trump also critiqued the United Nations following an anti-Israel vote at the international organization that the Obama administration did not veto.
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“The United Nations has such great potential but right now it is just a club for people to get together, talk and have a good time. So sad!” he wrote.
In a CNN interview that former Obama senior advisor David Axelrod conducted with the president, Obama claimed the message of a united U.S. that he spoke about in his noteworthy 2004 Democratic National Convention keynote speech still would have inspired most Americans to vote for him, if he had been allowed to run for a third term.
“You know, I am confident in this vision because I’m confident that if I – if I had run again and articulated it, I think I could’ve mobilized a majority of the American people to rally behind it.”
“I know that in conversations that I’ve had with people around the country, even some people who disagreed with me, they would say, ‘The vision, the direction that you point towards is the right one,'” he said, the Daily Mail reports.
Republicans such as former Fox News Channel CEO Roger Ailes and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell “mobilized a backlash to this vision” in order to stir up problems for the Democrats, Obama claimed.
Trump’s unity vision during his campaign rested upon him uniting citizens as “one people, under one God, saluting one American flag.”
The president stated his vision was compromised by GOP members that “just throw sand in the gears” and fomented national disunity.
He stated Republicans believe “that if we just say ‘no,’ then that will puncture the balloon, that all this talk about hope and change and ‘no red state and blue state’ is — is proven to be a mirage, a fantasy.”
In the interview, published on Dec. 26, Obama signaled he may speak out from time to time as a political retiree if Trump’s presidency raises “foundational issues about our democracy.”
“I have to be quiet for a while. And I don’t mean politically, I mean internally,” he said. “At a certain point, you make room for new voices and fresh legs [of the Democratic party],” Obama said.
But, he says, “that doesn’t mean that if a year from now, or a year-and-a-half from now, or two years from now, there is an issue of such moment, such import, that isn’t just a debate about a particular tax bill or, you know, a particular policy, but goes to some foundational issues about our democracy, that I might not weigh in.”
“You know, I’m still a citizen and that carries with it duties and obligations.”
Former presidents typically do not openly comment about a current president’s policies once they vacate the White House.
Sources: Daily Mail, CNN / Photo credit: White House via Venture Beat
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Obama: I Would've Beaten Trump
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