Obama Says He Would Have Defeated Trump for a Third Term
2016/12/29 15:17:45 Source：The New York Times
HONOLULU — President Barack Obama expressed confidence that, if he had run for a third term, he would have defeated Donald Trump, according to an interview released Monday with David Axelrod, his friend and former adviser.
“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,” Obama said on Axelrod’s podcast, “The Axe Files,” referring to his message of inclusion and helping middle-class Americans.
“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.
Several hours after the interview was posted, Trump responded on Twitter. “President Obama said that he thinks he would have won against me,” Trump said. “He should say that but I say NO WAY! — jobs leaving, ISIS, OCare, etc.”
The discussion in the interview was pure political conjecture, because the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution limits a president to two terms.
Obama praised the Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton, saying that she performed well under difficult circumstances and that there “was a double standard with her.”
“For whatever reason, there’s been a long-standing difficulty in her relationship with the press that meant her flaws were wildly amplified,” he said.
But Obama also said she campaigned too cautiously.
“If you think you’re winning, then you have a tendency, just like in sports, maybe to play it safer,” Obama said.
He added: “And the economy has been improving. There is a sense, obviously, that some communities have been left behind from the recovery and people feeling anxious about that.”
It was “nonsense,” Obama said, that Democrats had abandoned white working-class Americans, a group that rallied behind Trump.
The problem, Obama said, was that Democratic politicians were not communicating to these people “that we understand why they’re frustrated.”
