Reuters, Honolulu :
U.S. President Barack Obama said in an interview broadcast on Monday that he would have won most Americans’ support if he had been able to run against Donald Trump for a third term.
“No way!” Trump countered in a tweet, citing as liabilities U.S. companies taking jobs overseas, the fight against Islamic State militants and Obama’s signature healthcare law.
Barred by the U.S. Constitution from seeking a third four-year-term, the president told his former adviser David Axelrod in a podcast that Americans would have backed Obama’s vision.
“I’m confident that 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, referring to his 2008 campaign message of hope and change.
A wealthy businessman, the Republican Trump will assume his first public office when he succeeds Obama on Jan. 20. He defeated Democrat Hillary Clinton on Nov. 8 with a promise to clean up Washington. In a tweet, Clinton spokesman Brian Fallon said Obama would have beaten Trump and Clinton would have won if not for an FBI statement shortly before the election disclosing new material on Clinton’s email practices as secretary of state.
Clinton’s aides have said FBI Director James Comey’s announcement, which led to no charges, swung the election, a charge Trump’s team has dismissed.
Obama said Clinton “performed wonderfully under really tough circumstances.” He said she focused on Trump’s flaws and could have argued more that the Democratic Party agenda helped working people.
Trump garnered more than 270 of the 538 state-by-state electoral votes to win the presidency. Clinton won 48.2 percent of the popular vote compared with 46.1 percent for Trump, according to the Associated Press.
“President Obama said that he thinks he would have won against me. He should say that but I say NO WAY! – jobs leaving, ISIS, OCare, etc.,” he tweeted, referring to the president’s signature health care plan.
Hillary Clinton was defeated by Trump in a stunning outcome almost no one predicted, and Obama was philosophical and a little rueful in the interview regarding the Democrats’ loss.
“Losing’s never fun,” he tells Axelrod, a political strategist who helped craft Obama’s winning 2008 presidential campaign and then followed him to the White House. “I’m proud that I have tried to conduct myself in office to do what I think is right rather than what is popular, I always tell people don’t underestimate the public humiliation of losing in politics,” Obama said.
“It’s unlike what most people experience as adults, this sense of rejection.”
But he was also proud of the way the progress made in the two terms of his presidency, thanks to the “spirit of America,” especially evident in the younger generation.
“That spirit of America has still been there in all sorts of ways. It manifests itself in communities all across the country,” Obama said.
“We see it in this younger generation that is smarter, more tolerant, more innovative, more creative, more entrepreneurial, would not even think about, you know, discriminating somebody against for example because of their sexual orientation,” the president said.
“All those things that I describe, you’re seeing in our society, particularly among 20-year-olds, 30-year-olds.’
Despite the election of Trump-a Republican who appears set to put in place policies that will take the country sharply to the right-during his presidency “the culture actually did shift,” Obama told Axelrod.
