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United States President-elect Donald Trump has two words for President Barack Obama, who suggested his 2008 message of hope and change could land him a third term in the White House if he were constitutionally eligible: “NO WAY!”
A dispute erupted after Obama in an interview with his former adviser and longtime friend David Axelrod, a CNN analyst, for his ‘The Axe Files’ podcast said that the vision of a united America he stressed in his famous 2004 Democratic National Convention keynote speech is still powerful enough that it might have carried the day.
“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 mobilised 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’,” Obama said.
Trump, naturally, disagreed. He took to his preferred medium -- Twitter -- to offer his reaction.
“President Obama said that he thinks he would have won against me. He should say that but I say NO WAY!” Trump wrote.
He suggested Obama’s record would have prevented him from securing a victory, citing jobs that have left the US troubles with Obama’s Affordable Care Act and the ongoing threat posed by the Islamic State group as examples.
Obama also said in the CNN interview published Monday that he might not stay on the sidelines and let his successor have the spotlight all to himself, if Trump’s presidency raises ‘foundational issues about our democracy.’
He seemed to be firing a warning shot that while he has no immediate plans to be vocal as a former president, that might change if he thinks the Trump administration threatens his own values.