In his final days of office, former President Obama privately told a group of reporters that the country would be “okay” if former President Trump served one term, but eight years “would be a problem.”
The country could "bail fast enough to be okay,” Obama was heard saying, concerned about the breakdown of democratic norms over a “sustained period.”
“I think four years is OK," Obama said, adding “take on some water, but we can kind of bail fast enough to be OK. Eight years would be a problem. I would be concerned about a sustained period in which some of these norms have broken down and started to corrode.”
On Jan. 17, 2021, Obama gave an off-the-record interview to reporters discussing several different topics, warning that Trump wouldn’t hold up what Democrats have already “accomplished” such as the Affordable Care Act and his administration's climate policies.
The former president also told the reporters that they would need to really “focus” when it came to reporting about Trump and that the media was not credible to the public.
“I think if you're jumping after every insult or terrible thing or a bit of rudeness that he's doing and just chasing that, I think there's a little bit of a three-card Monte there that you have to be careful about… I think you have to focus on a couple of things that are important and just stay on them and drive them home,” Obama said.
Obama claimed that Trump if given the chance, would “tear our democracy down.”
According to Vanity Fair, Obama used profane language to describe Trump, calling him things such as a “racist, sexist pig” and a “madman.”
Additionally, Obama claimed that Republicans were showing a “no shame” attitude, which Democrats did not have.
“I mean, if any of the things that came up here had happened in my administration, the number of Democrats who would have gone south on me and saying, 'Well, we think this is a problem,' it would have happened pretty quick,” Obama told the reporters.
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