WASHINGTON
President
Barack Obama says he could have been re-elected for a third term and
that the nation still largely embraces his political vision despite last
month's election of Donald Trump to succeed him.
The
US leader's remarks were made in an interview posted on the podcast
"The Axe Files," produced by CNN and the University of Chicago.
Obama,
who ends his second and final term in office in just over three weeks,
said he believes the American public still supports his progressive
vision, despite having voted for Trump — his political opposite.
"I
am confident in this vision because 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 tells the interviewer, his
former senior adviser David Axelrod, in the most recent of several exit
interviews he has been conducting.
But President-elect Donald Trump took to a favoured platform, Twitter, to reject Obama's supposition.
'NO WAY!': TRUMP
"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.
"The
majority does buy into the notion of a one America that is tolerant and
diverse and open and full of energy and dynamism," the US president
said.
"The problem is, it doesn't always manifest itself in politics."
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