Politics

Obama: Trump Made Argument That He Would ‘Blow This Place Up’

REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque

Katie Jerkovich Entertainment Reporter
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President Barack Obama said Donald Trump won the election because “he was able to make an argument that he would blow this place up.”

After having a few days to reflect on the stunning victory by Trump against Hillary Clinton, the president opened up in an upcoming issue of the New Yorker magazine about the election and what if any of his policies will survive the next four years. (RELATED: Donald Trump Wants A Few Good Men)

U.S. President Barack Obama meets with President-elect Donald Trump (L) to discuss transition plans in the White House Oval Office in Washington, U.S., November 10, 2016. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque

(photo: REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque)

“I think that the President-elect has shown himself to be able to make a connection with his supporters that gives him much more flexibility than the normal candidate to take a variety of approaches,” Obama said. “They seem to trust him, separate and apart from any particular thing that he says or does. And, as a consequence, I think we have to wait and see how, in the face of the realities of governance, he reacts to it.”

“Another way of putting this is that what has been true for some time is that if I proposed something that was literally word for word in the Republican Party platform, it would be immediately opposed by eighty to ninety per cent of the Republican voters,” he added. “And the reason is not that they’ve evaluated what I said. It’s that I said it. Well, the reverse then becomes true.”

“The President-elect, I think, was able to make an argument that he would blow this place up,” he continued. “Hillary may have been more vulnerable because she was viewed as an insider. And the reporting around the Goldman [Sachs executive] speeches might have reduced her advantage, the normal Democratic advantage, in the eyes of working people, that we were standing for them. I don’t think it was fair, but that’s how it played itself out.”

Obama said the Affordable Care Act is most “vulnerable” to Trump dismantling it.

“Obviously, the Affordable Care Act, I think, is most vulnerable, because that has been a unifying bogeyman for Republicans over the course of the last six years,” Obama said. “In the minds of a lot of the Republican base, it is an example of a big government program designed to take something from them and give it to someone else who is unworthy.”