President Barack Obama went on National Public Radio on Tuesday to urge Americans to remain calm after last week’s United Kingdom vote to quit the European Union despite making crazy threats about the consequences of a Brexit vote just a few weeks ago.
“I think that the best way to think about this is: a pause button has been pressed on the project of full European integration,” Obama told NPR on Tuesday concerning the Brexit vote.
“I would not overstate it,” Obama also said. “There’s been a little bit of hysteria post-Brexit vote, as if somehow NATO’s gone, the trans-Atlantic alliance is dissolving and every country is rushing off to its own corner. That’s not what’s happening.”
WATCH:
Obama’s reaction to the reality of the Brexit referendum is a far cry from his stance prior to the vote.
In late April — 66 days ago — Obama decided it would be a good idea to threaten ordinary British people with the possibility that the United States could wait an entire decade to establish a free trade pact with a post-EU United Kingdom.
“It could be five years from now, 10 years from now before we’re actually able to get something done,” Obama said during an April visit to Britain to celebrate Queen Elizabeth’s 90th birthday, according to The Guardian.
The United States would leave Great Britain in the economic lurch and finish trade talks with the European Union first instead, Obama said — apparently laboring under the belief that the United States cannot negotiate two trade agreements simultaneously.
“I don’t anticipate that anything I’ve said will change the position of those who are leading the campaigns in one direction or the other, but for ordinary voters I thought it would be relevant to hear what the president of the United States, who loves the British people and cares deeply about this relationship, has to say,” Obama sad in April, according to The Guardian.
This week, though, Obama told NPR he respects the will of British voters and now anticipates no “major cataclysmic changes as a consequence of this” — such as, say, a decade-long lull in U.S.-British trade relations due to an inability to sign an agreement between allies with an alliance lasting roughly two centuries.
“Keep in mind that Norway is not a member of the European Union, but Norway is one of our closest allies,” Obama told NPR. “They align themselves on almost every issue with Europe and us. They are a place that is continually supporting the kinds of initiatives internationally that we support, and, if over the course of what is going to be at least a two-year negotiation between England and Europe, Great Britain ends up being affiliated to Europe like Norway is, the average person is not going to notice a big change.”
Obama also took a trade-related swipe at presumed 2016 Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump in the NPR interview.
“Mr. Trump embodies global elites and has taken full advantage of it his entire life,” Obama said. “So, he’s hardly a spokesperson — a legitimate spokesperson — for a populist surge of working-class people on either side of the Atlantic.”
On June 23, 51.9 percent of British citizens voted to leave the European Union, with 48.1 voting to stay. Nearly three-fourths of Great Britain’s voting public turned out to the polls, which is just over 33.5 million people.
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